CornerStone Knowledge Acquisition and Synthesis Framework

In general, and especially in the “big data” era, there is often a failure to collect sufficient data about the data (metadata). This lack of metadata drastically reduces the potential use of the data, and the attempt to rectify this situation after the fact is often difficult, if not impossible. The necessary metadata must first be located, and then organized and associated with the data. Often those who know about the metadata are no longer available. The proposed alternative is to prepare the data for long-term preservation based on currently accepted best-practices for long-term digital archives. This means that both the data and the metadata are simultaneously collected and prepared for the archive. This methodology provides the best chance that the necessary metadata will be available for future analysis, and ensures use of the data being collected and preserved.