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Recursos de información

Metadata Standards
Trajectories and Enactment in the Life of an Ontology

In S. L. Star & M. Lampland (Eds.), Formalizing Practices: Reckoning with

Standards, Nu mbers and Models in Science and Ever yda y Life
(accepted 2006; forthcoming 200 7)

Florence Millerand and Geoffrey C. Bowker

Université de Montréal and Santa Clara University

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 Introduction
There has been an explosion of scientific data over the past twenty years, as more
and more sciences deploy remote sensing technologies and data-intensive techniques
such as MRIs. Just as we are increasingly monitoring and surveilling each other, we are
increasingly tracking the processes of environmental change on every scale from the cell
to the ecosystem. Further – and again the parallel with our forms of social control is
uncanny1 – we are with the development of cyberinfrastructure (or, in its kinder,
European coinage ‘e-science’) working through the possibilities of working with data
collected in multiple, heterogeneous settings and using sophisticated computational
techniques to ask questions across these settings. We cannot answer, it is claimed, the
big questions of the day without this facility – data from one discipline cannot build
picture of species loss which can inform policy, just as data from one source cannot
profile a population in order to discipline it.
The question is posed, therefore of the preservation, access and sharing of
scientific data2. In the traditional model of scientific research, data is wrapped into a
paper which produces a generalizable truth – after which the scaffolding can be kicked
away and the timeless truth can stand on its own. There has been relatively little active
holding of very long term datasets and little data reuse. In the current context, to the
contrary, there is an emphasis on what is oxymoronically called ‘raw’ data – which can
be gathered together, analyzed, visualized and theorized to produce new syntheses. This
is particularly so for the case of environmental data3, where theories need to range over
multiple temporal and spatial scales. It has been traditional in ecology for individuals or
small groups to collect data in short term projects (the length of a funding cycle) over
small areas (one square meter)4; this is no longer sufficient to the task5. Ecosystems
change in larger chunks of time (indeed, they follow multiple complex rhythms) and over
wider areas of space than traditionally conceived6. Thus researchers need to be able to
use datasets constructed by others, for different purposes; and they need to be able not
only to reach some kind of ontological accord between the disciplines (allowing kinds
and classifications to be shared) but also to be able to trust data produced by others – the
traditional ‘invisible college’7 becomes a teeming city with multiple linguistic
communities.
One of the major challenges for the development of a scientific
cyberinfrastructure aiming to foster collaboration and data sharing through information
networks is to ensure the frictionless circulation of data across diverse technical
platforms, organizational environments, disciplines and institutions. Or, to use the term
of the art, to ensure ‘interoperability’. A central problem here is that the storage, access
to and evaluation of the validity of data are extremely dependent on the ways in which
the data has been collected, labeled and stored. While it may be possible for two
colleagues in a discipline to share information about their data with a simple longhand
note, there is unquestionably a need for more documentation in the case of
pluridisciplinary teams working over multiple sites and scales. To deal with long-term
questions, for example, a given dataset may have been collected in one context using a
home-grown set of protocols, often deploying outdated instruments and terminologies.
The task of making that data available across disciplines and over time is in general an
unfunded mandate – it requires a special kind of altruism to carefully code your data in
ways beyond what you need for its immediate use. It is easy to see, therefore, why

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assorted technofixes are being discussed, debated and to some extent deployed in order to
address this problem set.
The resultant standards – most often conceived as being simple technical
solutions – are being developed to permit the interconnection of systems and thence the
free flow of data. The capacity for distributed, collective scientific work practice is
posited on the existence of shared information infrastructures and collaborative
platforms. These in turn require some base of shared standards. Although they are
largely ignored and invisible (buried in an infrastructure, wrapped in a black box) these
standards nonetheless constitute the necessary base for distributed cognitive work. In
order to understand the modalities of collaboration in collective work – scientific and
other – we need to understand standards. In particular we need to understand the forms
and functions of ‘metadata’ – data about data – standards.8
Here we examine an infrastructure development project for an ecological research
community – the American network for long-term ecological research (LTER) – which is
endeavoring to standardize its data management through the adoption of a shared
metadata standard called the Ecological Metadata Language (EML). This is one of a
suite of XML’s – there is VRML (Virtual Reality Markup Language) and even another
EML (Educational Modeling Language). This standardization process began in 1996, at
the level of the LTER network. It crystallized in 2001 with the adoption of the EML
standard by the community. It has since been the subject of a controversy which can be
characterized as “mission successful” (by completing the implementation cycle) or
“succes to come” (by staying the course).
It is precisely these divergent visions which are the object of this paper. We do
not so much want to know the success conditions for the implementation of an
information management standard in an organization, so much as to know from what time
and according to which point of view the success or failure of the implementation are
judged. We will draw on an ethnographic study of the community to explore the
alignment of diverse trajectories9 in standards development. We will explore this process
as one of the enactment of a standard.

1. The development of information infrastructures at the intersection of

social worlds
As for scientific activity in general, the development of information
infrastructures for the sciences requires the cooperation of a heterogeneous set of actors –
in this case domain experts, IT specialists, informatics researchers and funding agencies.
There is no linear narrative to be told: “The time of innovations depends on the geometry
of the actors, not on the calendar”10. In other words, we cannot track a single life cycle
(development, deployment, death) but must pay attention to the diverse temporalities of
the actors. This perspective allows us to better grasp how the existence and even the
reality of projects varies over time, in line with the engagement or disengagement of
actors in the development of these projects or objects. Thus although a technical object
may exist in prototype form, it can be considered more or less real only to the extent that
certain groups of actors rally or not to its cause11.
What interests us here is the point of contact between the different trajectories of
the human actors as well as the non-human actors in the process of standardization at

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work in the heart of the LTER research community. What happens in this process which
leads one group of actors to formulate an alternative history to the ‘success story’?
Which trajectories interact with each other, and how do they adjust accordingly? How
are certain trajectories redefined?
An immediate problem is to know which trajectories to follow,12 since the choice
of following any one in particular over another can lead to a different understanding of
the social, technical and organizational configuration of the study. Infrastructure studies
is a useful source here, for it shines analytical light on rarely-studied phenomena – such
as the ‘invisible’ work carried out in the background by actors whose performance is
considered so much the better to the extent that it is self-effacing, invisible.13
We conceptualize the EML standard as a support for the coordination of different
social worlds - domain researchers, standards development teams, information managers
concerned with its implementation. EML a priori as a solution to a set of technical
problems - a solution from which will issue the one good tool which can be used by all.
However, this technical standard and its implementation process in fact speak directly to
the organization of scientific work: it assumes specific configurations of actors, tools and
data. In order to explore this dimension, we shall deploy the concept of enactment,
developed by Karl Weick.14 In this tradition, Jane Fountain invites us to distinguish
between an ‘objective’ technology – that is to say a set of technical, material and
computing components such as the Internet – and an ‘enacted’ technology – that is to say
the technology on the ground as it is perceived, conceived and used in practice, in a
particular context. In this view, the way in which actors enact technical configurations
such as standards depends directly on their imbrication in cognitive, social, cultural and
institutional structures. Organizational arrangements (characterized by routines,
standards, norms, politics) mediate the enactment of technologies, which in return
contribute to the refashioning of these arrangements.
We propose, therefore, to examine enactment in action – to trace two sets of
histories of a single process of standardization, through restoring the artifacts, actors and
narratives to the context whence they emerged. This perspective permits a better
understanding of the social and organizational dynamics at the heart of projects for the
development of large scale information infrastructures.

2. The LTER Research Community and the EML Standard

The LTER program constitutes a distributed, heterogeneous network of more than
1800 research scientists and students. Formed in 1980, the network currently consists of
26 sites or research stations15 (ironically, some ‘long term’ sites have already closed; and
more have been added). Each is arranged around a particular biome – for example a hot
desert region, a coastal estuary, a temperate pine forest or an Arctic tundra – in the
continental United States and Antarctica. A 27th site is charged with the administration
and coordination of the group. The program’s mission is to further understanding of
environmental change through interdisciplinary collaboration and long term research
projects.
One of the chief challenges of LTER is to move beyond the ‘plot’ of traditional
ecoscience to analyze change at the scale of a continent and beyond the six year funding
cycle or 30 year career cycle of the scientist to create baselines of data spanning multiple
decades. While the preservation of data over time, and their storing in conditions

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appropriate to their present and future use, has always been a priority within the different
sites of the LTER network, there has been a new urgency with the development of a
cyberinfrastructure projects aiming to encourage data sharing across the community.
Each of the 26 sites in the network takes responsibility for the management of
research data produced locally; and each in general has its own information system (its
own databases). An information manager is charged with the development and
maintenance of local infrastructures. Across the network, then, data are stored
autonomously by the different sites – a fact which renders the search for and access to
data relatively complex and laborious (which in turn naturally militates against the
network realizing its mission). Accordingly, a project was put into place in 1996 to
initiate a networked information infrastructure permitting the federation of the local
databases and thus data exchange.
The project has encountered three major challenges: the heterogeneity of the data
which circulates through the research community; their wide dispersal; and the multiple
systems of coding and storing.16 Beyond the diversity of data attached to a given
scientific project, there can also be an extreme disparity in their organization and
formatting, depending on the collection protocols adopted. For example, data to measure
the amount of chlorophyll present in a sample of sea water will be organized into separate
files corresponding to the number of trips made; whereas the same measures taken over a
year in a given lake will be held in one single file. Further, local cataloguing cultures
generally use information (or metadata) which is not necessarily understandable outside
of a given research project, site or discipline. Thus ‘special’ (personalized) measurement
units can be created for the analytic needs of a particular research project (for example
the ungeneralized unit: “number of leaves per change of height in a plant”). In this
context, the LTER network office soon saw the need for a set of data standards. Or, to be
more precise, the need for standardized methods for the collection of metadata has been
taken as the preferred solution for data interoperability.
In an ideal world, the metadata contain all the details necessary for all possible
secondary users of a dataset (an ideal solution which evokes Spinoza’s problem – to
know a single fact about the world, you need to know every fact about the world). These
include detailed and diverse information, such as the names of the researchers who
collected the data, the title of the project they were working on, the project summary, key
words, the type of biome, sampling techniques, the calibration of the measuring tools at
the time of data collection. By extension, the possibility of complex analyses drawing on
physical, chemical, biological data within a given geographical area will depend on the
quality of the metadata. (We should note at this point that ‘metadata’ is not necessarily
the only possible solution; however it has presented itself – organizationally and
intellectually – as central to this community.)
Although they appear to be mere technicalities to some, metadata take on a central
importance in the production of scientific theories in the degree to which they condition
access to data, guarantee their integrity and delimit their interpretative uses. When you
are dealing with comparative or long term studies, you find that material conditions
change over time and space – instruments might become more accurate, for example,
which indicates the need for precise documentation of their calibration. When combining
data across the disciplines, metadata do more than provide a convenient label: they
structure the conversation which ensues. An analogy here is with normal language use.

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There are communities for whom ‘casualty’ means ‘someone injured or killed’ and others
for whom it is simply an euphemism for ‘fatality’. Or there are some for whom
‘democracy’ means ‘rule of the people’ and others for whom it is a euphemism for
‘capitalism’. Unless you can calibrate across the communities (and it is a difficult act of
imagination often to recognize how local and specific your usage is) then you cannot
communicate.
The EML metadata description language is precisely a standardized language for
the generation of metadata in the specific domain of the sciences of the environment – it
is much better to use science in the plural here, since each domain has its own
configuration of classifications, instruments, dates and places. EML is the standard which
the LTER research community has decided to adopt when it engaged in the process of
standardizing its scientific data management practices.

3. Controversies
The process of standardization which the LTER community is engaged in has two
major objectives: the promotion of interdisciplinary collaboration through data sharing
and the improvement of long term data preservation.17 Although both these objectives
and the deployment of EML to their end are generally agreed, conflicting voices could be
heard at the moment of deployment.
Here, we examine two narratives, from two categories of actors, which tell
radically different tales about the EML standard as successfully implemented or still a
work in progress. The first comes from the standard’s developers, which includes the
experts who wrote the specifications for EML together with the coordinators of the LTER
network. The second presents the point of view of those enacting the standard – that is
to say the information managers whose task it is to implement it at a given site. At the
time of this study, the ‘success’ narrative was carrying the day – it was already
formalized, written up in reports; whereas the latter was diffuse and oral. (If in the
context of policy work in John King’s dictum, “numbers beat no numbers every time” –
then in the context of computer science funding, written beats oral every time).
With respect to methods, interviews were conducted with both groups of actors,
and participant observations were carried on throughout the standard implementation at
two of the LTER sites. Detailed document analysis were systematically performed.

3.1 Narrative 1: “EML is a success: the entire LTER community has adopted it”
Version 1.0 of EML first saw the light of day in 1997 at the National Center for
Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) in Santa Barbara. It was the product of a
researcher in ecological informatics working with two doctoral students. EML responded
in the first instance to internal preoccupations within NCEAS, which since its creation in
1995 has been addressing the absence of tools and techniques for analyzing and
synthesizing environmental data. A grant was submitted to the National Science
Foundation, which funded its development.
Technically, EML is based on two emergent standards (SGML and XML) which
have, grosso modo been developed in order to turn networked information from simple
text fields into searchable, combinable databases. Its content is drawn from the main data
description types in use in the domain – such as those recognized by the Ecological
Society of America, itself a pioneer in preserving datasets alongside of papers. Versions

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1.0 to 1.4 cascaded out between 1997 and 1999. They were tested within NCEAS.
Given the difficulties encountered in use, a major revision of the language was suggested
(would that one could vary natural languages so simply) – and a second grant proposal
was written and subsequently funded. The development team went from being three
people to a collaboratory18 - a collaborative platform based on voluntary participation
and open to the whole community of environmental scientists. This open development
model was not immediately successful, even if the team was able to attract some more
developers, including – for the first time – a separately but synergistically funded
information manager from the LTER. The development of EML went on apace, with
several significant structural changes being made. Seventeen versions were produced
between 1999 and 2002.
In 2001, the team reckoned that it had produced a stable version of EML (version
1.9, which was according anointed with the title EML2.0 beta). The team decided to
present their product at the annual conference of LTER information managers, held that
year in Madison. Discussion was lively but responses were extremely favorable – the
information managers recognized the usefulness of such a standard for the LTER
community and were moved to formally adopt EML. Version 2.0 was put into
circulation; the LTER network scientific community (one of the most important
communities in environmental research) adopted the standard. In short, the EML project
was a resounding success.

3.2 Narrative 2: “EML is not (yet) a success: it needs to be developed further

before it can be used”
At the period of the creation of EML in 1997, the LTER network sites already had
in place systems for managing their scientific data. Depending on the site, these systems
were more or less formalized – that is to say that they did not necessarily use the same
standardized vocabularies, even if some of them broadly speaking used the data
descriptors recognized by the American Society of Ecology – leading to the standard
problem of almost compatibility. In 1996, the inauguration of a project to develop a
network wide information system stimulated discussions about standardizing data
management procedures and encouraged the development of a common tool set for the
information managers of the community. However, there was still no central initiative
covering the whole network. In 2001, the EML project received a favorable reception
from the information managers, who made a consensus decision to adopt it. The
implementation began.
While some sites began the work of implementing the standard relatively quickly,
most of them ran into significant problems. The standard is complex and it is difficult to
understand in its entirety. The technical tools intended to facilitate the standard’s
implementation proved unusable, i.e. incompatible with existing local practices and
infrastructures. And in general there was just a huge amount of work to be done (on top
of the normal workload) with minimal resources – some sites had to undertake a
complete restructuring of their data management practices.
Numerous ad hoc solutions were brought to bear – for example, home-grown
tools that some of the information managers shared amongst themselves to facilitate the
work of the conversion of local systems into the format required by the EML standard.

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 The information managers organized two workshops in which the developpers
participated devoted to the implementation of EML in 2003 and 2004. These led to the
production of a synthetic ‘best practices’ document for EML implementation. These had
a material impact on implementation at a number of sites. This in turn led to a five step
implementation plan formulated conjointly by the information managers and the LTER
network coordinators.
At the annual conference of information managers in 2005 at Montreal, progress
was seen as somewhat mixed – EML implementation was seen as a complex and
laborious process whose outcomes in terms of improvement of data management
remained somewhat difficult to identify. EML was not yet a success – it had to be
partially refactored in order to be usable.

4. Trajectories
On the one hand, then, we have a success story about the EML standard,
highlighting its consensus adoption by the LTER research community. On the other
hand, we have a very mixed picture – varying widely by site. While the first story moved
into the ‘happily ever after’ phase in 2001, the second had barely gotten beyond ‘once
upon a time’.
A simplistic reading of these two narratives would say that the measure of success
of a standardization process differs as a function of the different phases one is looking at
(here the phases of conception and development of the standard in contrast to that of
deployment and implementation). In other words, one could say that the information
managers couldn’t yet recognize the projects success at this point in time – they would
only be able to see it once the project was finally completed. This evolutionist reading of
technology development projects developing in an objective time frame really does not
advance our understanding of what really happens during the periods of emergence,
development, maturation, implementation and so forth. Further, it continues to privilege
the second story over the first – considering the success of the standard as being always
already assured, with full confirmation coming in the natural course of events. Thus it
favors the invention of the standard over its innovation19 - its deployment and
enactment20.
A temporal analysis of technology development projects should seek rather to
account for their evolution in terms of the multiple temporalities into which they are
integrated. It would then become possible to account, from the point of view of the
actors, for the whole set of events – including the more troubled periods when folks do
not want to talk about it (it does not sound good, for example, in the next funding
application) while others still seek to find a voice (for example, because they are too low
status to be heard; or if heard, they are not using a technical language the developers
understand).

4.1 Multiple Trajectories

It is striking the degree to which all of the actors involved in the standardization
process (EML developers, LTER network coordinators, information managers, domain
researchers …) have supported – and continue to support – the “EML project”. As
mentioned before, neither metadata nor the EML standard were the only possible solution
to ensure data interoperability through the network. Nevertheless, they all believe in the

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idea of a metadata standard permitting the exchange and sharing of data throughout the
LTER network and beyond. In this sense, it’s not the case of the imposition of a standard
by one group of actors (developers and coordinators) on a hostile, resistant group
(information managers or domain researchers). The latter have always been highly
supportive of the project, up to including status of EML implementation in the
information management review’s criteria for the sites.21 It as at the moment of the
actual implementation of the standard at a give site when critical problems emerge and
discordant voices can be heard.
The recognition of these difficulties and the controversy which has ensued have
contributed to bringing the status of EML as a useable standard into doubt. Two years
after its adoption, an inquiry revealed that it had not yet been completely implemented in
a single one of the 26 network sites, and that the tools developed explicitly for this
purposes remained largely unused. EML seemed to be a standard in name only.
The juxtaposition of the two narratives above reveals the confrontation of two
visions of the EML standard. An imaginary dialogue, inspired by Latour’s history of the
Aramis project22 reveals the gulf between the two sets of actors:
“EML 2.0 exists – the bulk of the work has been done, all we need to do is
implement it” (the developers)
“All we need to do …!? But a metadata standard is just a language. No matter
how perfect it is, it only exists if it’s being used – if it serves above all to integrate
data” (information managers).
In other words, in 2001 the EML standard was a metadata standard without data.
We propose to read these differing perspectives on EML by restoring them to the
trajectories of the actors concerned. Thus, from the point of its developers, the EML
standard was above all one of research and development. The project goal was the
creation of a standardized description language for metadata rather than its
materialization. Its ambition was to make itself the reference standard in environmental
sciences. From this perspective, the standard’s development and its adoption by the wider
research community of environmental scientists constitute the main success criteria for
the project. From the point of view of the information managers, the EML standard
represented a set of tools and practices for the better management of scientific data –
notably by improving the quality of metadata produced within each of the sites. By this
view, the successful incorporation of this new tool – and the new modes of practice
which accompany it – within local sociotechnical infrastructures constitute the major
success criteria for the EML project. Finally, from the point of view of the scientists
belonging to the LTER research community, the EML standard is a technical tool which
opens the door to multisite research endeavors through a better form of access to and
sharing of data and which promises a better diffusion of data beyond the LTER network.
From this perspective, the capacity to carry out multidisciplinary projects in very large
datasets through a single interface constitutes the main criterion for the project’s success.

4.2 Trajectory Alignment

We read the implementation work carried out by the information managers as a
process of appropriation23 of the standard in the course of which the work of trajectory
alignment is done. The appropriation of the EML standard in the different sites worked
out in effect as the adjustment of the technical tool to local contexts, and the adaptation of

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pre-existing practices to new ways of working. Concretely, this entailed a real work of
bricolage from the information managers seeking to incorporate a (generic) standard into
a (local) context, which both gave it its purpose and permitted its use.
The trajectory of EML according to the first narrative was born of the main
descriptors of ecological data in use in the domain, became a research and development
project at NCEAS and then the metadata standard of reference for environmental
sciences. It seemed to take a turn or a certain reorientation as it began to circulate in the
LTER network. From that moment, the description of the EML project as one of
conception, development, deployment and implementation ceased to work. In the
implementation phase there was re-development work, which led to a reconsideration of
the conceptual basis of the work and then some more re-development for re-
implementation and so forth. The EML project was changing – the set of trajectories had
to be realigned.
What happened then in this implementation phase of the standard which
necessitated more … implementation work? The information managers spontaneously
responded that there was a lack of tools permitting the conversion of local metadata
systems into the EML format. Equally, they complained that there was a weak
understanding of real implementation processes from the network coordinators, who
seemed to them to have unrealistic expectations. The problem was that data management
practices are not solely dependent on the types of technical infrastructure: they are also
and above all intimately linked to the nature of the research projects being studies, to the
disciplinary and organizational cultures of the sites – in short to the local structure of
scientific work.
The following two interview extracts illustrate on the one hand the local and
contingent nature of the scientific work being done and on the other the complexity of the
information managers’ task of cataloguing research data:

(1) I was getting nutrient data and my units came in as micromoles with the
micron symbol and capital M, micromoles. When I started having to go into
EML, which does not have that unit, I had to figure out well what actually is
this unit. And in digging deeper and going to our lab that processed these data
I found out its not micromoles its micromoles/liter. And I am not a chemist so
it just didn’t mean anything to me. You know I am just organizing and
posting this type of data, and so it really opened my eyes that I have a bigger
issue here (35.26) than I thought you know because here we’ve got people
reporting things as micromoles which is not proper. But that is just the way
the work is done, and shared, and no one ever questioned it. That’s kind of
interesting. So I started dataset by dataset trying to retrofit everything back
into you know EML. And I have this ongoing list of these custom units that I
am compiling, making my best guess at and then I am going either to the
actual you now my PI or a collaborator that gave me those data, and having to
sit down with them to say can you please verify, if you were going to describe
this unit in EML as a custom unit does this make sense. Are you reporting it
the proper way. Are you calling this the attribute what it would universally be
called, that kind of thing... (IM_L.)

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 This first extract provides an example of the locally situated work that doesn’t yet
scale as a joint measurement unit within the framework of the shared conventions of a
community of practice – in this case the LTER network. The ‘retrofitting’ referred to is
the occasion for a lot of cyberinfrastructure disasters – data that was understood well
enough by a local group often has to be completely revisited for a wider community.
Designers persist in seeing the conversion task as easy, but this is only on the assumption
that the data being fed in is clean and consistent.

(2) Micromoles Per Liter and Micromolar are measurement units for
concentration. Technically, both are micromoles per liter, and so equivalent
in magnitude. [But] their scopes are different, because micromoles per liter
can be used for a particulate or dissolved constituent, and micromolar is
correctly used only for dissolved. So they are not exactly interchangeable.
Micromoles Per Liter and Millimoles Per Cubic Meter are equivalent in
magnitude, but different disciplines have preferences for one or the other.
[Also], if you happen to be in open ocean, you would run into micromoles per
kilogram and micromoles per cubic meter, which are similarly equivalent only
at sea level, because interconversion depends on pressure… (IM_M.)

This second extract gives an example of measurement units which are a priori
identical but which mean different things in different disciplinary environments.
Taking a step back, the general problem can be characterized thusly. In the grand
old days of the nineteenth through early twentieth centuries, when scientific certainty was
at its zenith, it seemed as if there were a clear and consistent classification of and
hierarchy between the sciences. The most famous example is Auguste Comte’s
classification of science into a classificatory tree going from mathematics through
physics and chemistry down (or up, depending on your inclination) to sociology. Each
part of each discipline was divided into statics and dynamics. This was also the period of
the discovery of the principle (not, be it noted the fact) of division of labor: Charles
Babbage mirrored his computer on factory production techniques – making a complex
task easy by splitting it into a set of serial subtasks. Together, classificatory principle
with the division of labor created a picture of scientists as workers in a giant collective
enterprise – in Poincaré’s terms, workers lay bricks in the cathedral of science. Some
indeed saw the end of the period of ‘heroic science’ as the principle of the division of
labor emerged.
We are running nowadays into the question of whether cathedrals need
blueprints.24 What could possibly guarantee that all of these bricks would fit together
into a seamless whole? There are two options – in close parallel with ‘blind watchmaker’
positions. Either there was a higher entity (the universal scientific method and the
positivist classification of science in this case) ensuring that they all fit; or there was a
constant, contingent, local process of partial fitting and constant disordering which could
still, in the long term, guarantee that at any one ‘join’ there was a fit (though there could
not possibly be across the set of joins). Both scientists and information systems designers
have been working largely from the former assumption. When they face the reality of the
latter they are constantly surprised – they have not been following the scientific method
as faithfully as they thought (their databases are dirty, units are ambiguous) and it does

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not all fit into clearly designated, separable chunks (two disciplines might both claim
‘control’ over the same measurement unit).

4.3 The Case of the Dictionary as Articulation Strategy

At the start of 2005, with the tools created by the developers not yet being used by
information managers and the implementation dragging on, the network coordinators
began development of a new tool intended to accelerate implementation of the standard
among the sites. In parallel – and partly in reaction to this project – some information
managers initiated the development of a ‘house’ tool: a repertoire of measurement units.
One of the principal difficulties which the information managers faced was tied to
the complexity of the work of translating their metadata into the EML language –
notably with respect to measurement units. On the one hand, the dictionary of
measurement units which came with the EML standard essentially catalogued physical
measurement units of ecological phenomena – while most LTER network sites were
using biological and ecological measurement units. On the other hand, it is extremely
difficult to describe in a standardized language ‘special’ or personalized measurement
units – that is to say units developed for some specific purpose in a research project, and
which only really make sense in the context of that project.
Faced with these difficulties, some information managers then began to exchange
lists of measurement units (including local ones) used at their site, so as to compare their
respective translations and to catch any inconsistencies. This quickly evolved into a
project to transform these lists into an LTER-wide catalogue of units. The plan was to
produce a dynamic, online tool available through the LTER intranet. The team, which
until then had been made up solely of information managers, expanded to include a
representative from the network office. They developed a prototype integrating the unit
lists of six sites. This was presented in August 2005 to the annual conference of LTER
information managers. It was represented both as an implementation aid for the EML
standard and as an example of a successful collaboration between information managers
and developers/coordinators.
Technically, this tool provided the information managers in the network access to
definitions of measurement units in EML (including some specialized units), to propose
corrections to the standard’s unit dictionary, and to add definitions of other units.
However, it did considerably more than facilitate conversion from one format to the next
– it was above all a work of social coordination.
These local ad hoc initiatives and the network-wide projects can be seen as
strategies for re-articulating the work – on the one hand between the information
managers themselves and on the other between them and the developers/coordinators.
The information managers did not need the tool of itself as much as they needed all this
work of information mediation which the enactment of the standard brought to bear.
How best to describe such and such a measurement unit? Is a given measure a local or a
network one? Can this unit be added to the EML dictionary? The work of producing the
dictionary of units became a tool for facilitating coordination and cooperation between
different worlds. In other words, by creating a tool that could be used locally at each site
and yet contribute to the improvement of the standard, the information managers created
a boundary object25 which capable of supporting this articulation work between enactors
and developers.

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 5. Enactment
We propose using the concept of enactment to better understand the complexity of
the work of the information managers. These latter not only ensured the implantation of
the EML standard and the programming of some additional functionalities which could
make it operational (its implementation) – they also worked on its interpretation. That is
to say, they worked on its staging (in the theatrical sense of the term), which involved co-
adapting the standard and local work practices. These mutual adaptations are better seen
not as local resistances but as necessary adjustments without which the EML standard
could not operate within the LTER community.
In what ways did the EML standard contribute to changes in the social worlds of
the actors? And how did these worlds work to change the standards? These changes
involved first the identities of the actors and their organizational structures and second
the ‘script’ of the technical tool.

5.1 New Organizational Roles and Structures

Throughout infrastructuring in general and this standardization process in
particular, the information managers as a community of practice became ‘visible’ within
the LTER network26. In the same way, certain aspects of their work which until then had
been little known and recognized became explicit. In 2004, when there was an
efflorescence of house tools in particular sites and the information managers were being
integrated with the developers, they achieved ‘official’ status as developers – that is to
say they are on the list of credits attached to the standard’s documentation. The
complexity of their task (taking the local and rendering it into a universal language – a
task that even the engineers of Babel found daunting – was recognized.
That said, even if the transformation of organizational models within the LTER
community forced a reorganization of working patterns (from site-based to a federated
structure), and even if the role of information managers was considerably transformed,
their status as technicians whose task is to provide support and maintenance remains
dominant in the network – notably among the domain scientists. Further, even if the
team of experts recognized their contribution as developers of the standard, their
contribution remains ambiguous to the extent that developers retain the tendency to see
initiatives from the information managers as too local and not state of the art. Thus the
synthetic ‘best practices’ document produced by the information managers was judged to
have too many signs of its origin within the LTER community to be integrated into the
standard’s documentation. (And, one hesitates to say ‘of course’, of course, but as a
matter of course the social and organizational innovation was similarly not included in
the standard’s documentation).
It remains the case that the set of actions carried out by the information managers
during this standardization process revealed that another organizational configuration was
possible – if only at the very basic level of resource allocation. If the development of a
metadata standard for a research community like the LTER requires significant funding
then so a forteriori does its enactment within a given setting. More concretely, the
information managers contributed to putting into place a new representative structure – in
this case a permanent committee formed equally of information managers and domain
experts, whose mission is to ensure a representative and advisory role in the development

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of integrated network information management practices: the Network Information
Advisory Committee (NISAC). This committee came into being one year after the
adoption of the EML standard (a somewhat lengthy gestation period!), when the initial
sets of difficulties incited the information managers to initiate a dialogue with domain
scientists. Out of this committee came the plan to implement the standard in different
stages.
Beyond this new organizational structure, a new form of collaborative work at the
intersection of local, site-based work and global (network) activity was experimented
with successfully. The project of building a dictionary of measurement units constituted
a veritable innovation (from below) within the LTER community, to the extent that one
the one hand it opened the way for the transformation of a local initiative into a project
for participatory design at the network level and on the other created a new collaboration
space between two groups of actors who had not been directly associated before
(information managers and developers/coordinators).

5.2 Redefinition of the Standard

If the standard itself has been the object of multiple versions over the course of its
development – in part as a result of the new members integrated into the team – what was
presented in 2001 to the LTER information managers was a black box – a final version.
The box was reopened, and not always in the same way, across the set of sites.
Thus as we have seen certain lacunae in the standard were identified and the
implementation plan itself changed to accommodate the different rhythms of integration
of the different sites. More generally, the kinds of difficulties which come into play
when you try to enact a standard generic enough that it could in principle apply to any
kind of data.27 The EML project included a definition of a certain role for researchers –
that of describing their data in this new language.28 Indeed, researchers have always been
envisaged by the developers as future users of the standard. They both describe their data
collections in EML terms and can carry out complex, integrative studies using vast
dataset as a result of these standardized descriptions. It is interesting to note that the role
of the information managers has never been mentioned (at least explicitly) in scenarios of
EML use.
And yet, in practice, a number LTER researchers refused their roles – principally
through lack of time (standards tend to be an unfunded mandate) and interest. It should
be recognized that implementation of the standard can double the amount of work they
need to do to enter their data. Moreover, the investment in time to learn the EML
language (without mentioning that of learning the conversion tools) has constituted a
point of no return for many. The information managers has taken on this role which was
a priori destined for others.
One can certainly read this redistribution of roles as a coming from a transitional
period – and thus imagine that the LTER network researchers will get up to speed with
EML to the extent that the tools become easier to use and the standard is taken up within
environmental science generally. However, the question of training researchers to use
EML (and more widely to understand the new forms of information management
associated with an integrated infrastructure) is at present hanging – and it seems likely
that the information managers will continue to pick up the slack.

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 6. Conclusion
In one sense, then, the EML standard did not change anything. The division of
labor remains the same (information managers are still in charge of the production of
EML metadata); roles are stable (information managers contribute to the redevelopment
of a standard for the LTER network, whilst developers work on the development of a
standard for environmental science in general); local practices are confirmed (information
managers share ad hoc solutions and in-house tools). And yet, the EML standard has
changed the world. The actors’ identities have changed (information managers
recognized as developers and not merely implementers); new organizational structures
are built (information managers are now represented in the NISAC committee); new
forms of work are proposed (a collaborative space between the sites and the network has
opened up).
The implementation of EML is not simply a case of upgrading an existing system.
It consists above all in redefining the sociotechnical infrastructure which supports this
articulation of technical, social and scientific practices. These redefinitions have
significant consequences socially and organizationally. Because the tools are intimately
imbricated in local work practices, and because the EML standard operates only within a
given (social, technical, organizational) configuration, its enactment requires
infrastructural changes.
This is why it does not make sense to see standards simply as things out there in
the world which have a predetermined set of attributes. In information systems,
standards are in constant flux – they have to migrate between communities and across
platforms. Closure is a narrative which serves a purpose, not a fact which describes an
event.
We slice the ontological pie the wrong way if we see software over here and
organizational arrangements over there. Each standard in practice is made up of sets of
technical specifications and organizational arrangements. As Latour has reminded is in
another context, the question is how to distribute qualities between the two29 – what
needs to be specified technically and what can be solved organizationally is an open
question, to which there is no one right answer. By assuming that specifications can exist
outside of organizational contexts, we have already given the game away: leading to the
continual need for the kind of innovation detailed in this chapter. And the innovation is
always forgotten, since the same ontological mistake – made elsewhere, by other people -
next time will again occasion its necessity. Indeed, a test for ontological errors in general
is that one can say the same thing a hundred different ways over a span of years – there is
no way in which the message can be heard until the organizational changes have taken
place such that a reception is possible30. Both standards and ontologies (the one
apparently technical and the realm of machines, the other apparently philosophical and
the realm of ideas) need to be socially, organizationally bundled – not as a perpetual
afterthought but as an integral necessity.

Acknowledgements:
The authors would like to thank our collaborators at UCSD, Karen Baker and David
Ribes, both members of the Comparative Interoperability Project, SES0433369

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Interoperability Strategies for Scientific Cyberinfrastructure: A Comparative Study,
2004-2007. For further information and publications visit:
http://interoperability.ucsd.edu (there is a special prize for the millionth visitor). We also
thank the LTER community participants for their interests and openess to this research.

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