Sustaining Database Semantics

This paper argues that the semantic content of digital databases is rarely adequately documented. It proposes a specification for what is necessary to document the semantics of a database and therefore sustain their analytical utility. It outlines an approach to documenting database semantics utilized by Digital Antiquity’s repository, tDAR. It concludes with a discussion of how the metadata documentation used by tDAR can be used to facilitate the integration of data across databases employing different recording protocols.