Biologists study Diatoms, a fundamental algae, to assess the health of aquatic systems. Diatom specimens have traditionally been preserved on analog slides, where a single slide can contain thousands of these microscopic organisms. Digitization of these collections presents both metadata challenges and opportunities. This paper reports on metadata research aimed at providing access to a digital portion of the Academy of Natural Sciences' Diatom Herbarium, Drexel University. We report results of a 3-part study covering 1) a review of relevant metadata standards and a microscopy metadata framework shared by Hammer et al., 2) a baseline metadata alignment mapping current diatom metadata properties to standard metadata types, and 3) a metadata risk analysis associated with the course of standard data curation practices. This research is part of an effort involving the transfer of these digital slides to an new system, DataFed, to support global accessible. The final section of this paper includes a conclusion and discusses next steps.

翻译：生物学家通过研究硅藻（一种基础藻类）来评估水生系统的健康状况。传统上，硅藻标本保存在模拟载玻片上，单张载玻片可包含数千个此类微观生物。这些馆藏的数字化既带来了元数据挑战，也创造了机遇。本文报告了一项元数据研究，旨在提供对德雷塞尔大学自然科学学院硅藻标本馆数字部分的访问。我们报告了一项三部分研究的结果，涵盖：1）对相关元数据标准及Hammer等人共享的显微术元数据框架的综述；2）将当前硅藻元数据属性映射至标准元数据类型的基线元数据对齐；3）与标准数据管理实践过程相关的元数据风险分析。本研究是涉及将这些数字载玻片转移至新系统DataFed以支持全球访问工作的一部分。本文最后部分包含结论并讨论了后续步骤。