[Go-essp-tech] metadata trackback demo and future.

[Bryan Lawrence]

Hi Folks

I know Sylvia's reported this on the curator list, but I thought I'd be a bit more public about it:

Yesterday the Metafor project formally concluded with a presentation to our expert reviewers at the European Commission in Brussels.  One of the things we did was get Sylvia to demonstrate the metadata trackback in the Curator gateway ... it's fair to say that the reviewers (and the Commission) were very impressed ... and gave metafor a very positive endorsement. This email is by way of an official thankyou to all those of you in the Curator team who contributed to a very successful project ... thus far:

We have committed to carry on the Metafor work in a number of ways: not only are we (most of the existing Metafor team) aiming to include it in a new bid to the commission (in a few weeks), we (NCAS) have already got some UK funding for a specific project - PIMMS, of which more later - and I've committed NCAS to ongoing support for Metafor questionnaire and governance out to at least the end of 2012 regardless of our succcess in bidding for external funding. I fully expect to role over that commitment year on year. We  - the metafor folks in the IS-ENES team - will also contribute further to the ESGF activity over the next year.

For those of you who haven't heard of PIMMS, here are some headlines: Eighteen month JISC funded activity (starting now) to:
 - Refactor the Metafor questionnaire for use in university departments
 - Create a new tool for defining experiments 
 - Engage with university community on usage (and CIM content), particularly vis-a-viz Paleo simulations.
 - Connect data holdings at Bristol University and Reading University to Metafor metadata.
 - Promulgate the Metafor approach elsewhere in UK

There are other activities afoot of which anon.

Cheers
Bryan

--
Bryan Lawrence
University of Reading:  Professor of Weather and Climate Computing.
National Centre for Atmospheric Science: Director of Models and Data. 
STFC: Director of the Centre for Environmental Data Archival.
Ph: +44 118 3786507 or 1235 445012; Web:home.badc.rl.ac.uk/lawrence