The Data Type Registry is a project that aims to solve the issues that exists around information management system operability, and focusing specifically on enabling data creators to parse, understand, share, and reuse data created by others. The project states that “the goal of the Data Type Registry effort is to allow data producers to record the implicit details of their data in the form of Data Types and to associate those Types, each unique identified, with different instances of datasets. Data consumers can then resolve the Type identifiers to Type records for gaining knowledge of the implicit assumptions in order to understand and process the data without additional support from data producers.” The project not only focuses on file types, but also on the type of data represented in a dataset and the meanings and connotations behind each dataset value.
