Geospatial, Keyword-based, and Access-Limited Data Discovery with Lunaris

Lunaris is a national research data discovery service operated by the Digital Research Alliance of Canada. Lunaris’ bilingual platform is a single point of search facilitating discovery of Canadian research data held in any of a growing number of data sources, including institutional repositories and government open data sources, among others. Lunaris’ index of Canadian research data is also harvested by other discovery services.

Lunaris allows geospatial search of datasets that contain some geospatial information by providing a map-based search interface that limits returned datasets to those within a user-specified bounding box. Lunaris integrates this map-based geospatial search with traditional keyword-based search and filtering, allowing users to directly search for data in a given topic area that is related to a geographical region of interest.

As part of ongoing discovery work, the Access-Limited Data Discovery Working Group, part of the Network of Experts, identified 137 data sources that contain datasets that are not immediately accessible or for which access or discovery is limited (https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/pa5fx). The group assessed how well those data sources met a set of discoverability and access criteria, and found areas for improvement that the discovery, access, and metadata community might use as an opportunity for growth.

This presentation will demonstrate Lunaris’ search capabilities, outline the Access-Limited Data Discovery Working Group’s effort to assess the discoverability of access-limited data, and present plans to work with sources of access-limited data to make that data discoverable with Lunaris. Attendees will learn how they can use Lunaris to discover Canadian data that is relevant to their research interests, learn how Lunaris may facilitate data reuse by enhancing data discoverability, and be introduced to the ongoing efforts to integrate data sources with limited discoverability into a leading national data discovery service in Canada.