Everything but the Kitchen Sink: Building a Metadata Repository for Time Series Data at the Federal Reserve Board

In support of the Board’s duty to conduct monetary policy for the United States, the research divisions at the Federal Reserve Board use a variety of time series data for both research and forecasting. The collection, maintenance, and upkeep of more than 50,000 time series from more than sixty sources in a central location are daunting tasks; documenting the metadata for the compilation and use of these data is even more so. We are currently building a comprehensive metadata repository that links three kinds of metadata about our time series: structural metadata, reference metadata, and operational metadata. Many of the pieces of this puzzle currently exist in an array of disparate formats: attributes in a proprietary database, HTML pages on a website, Word documents buried on a file server, etc. We are bringing these pieces of information together in a relational database setting to allow users to search and display relevant metadata for a particular series or economic concept. In addition, we are working to make the metadata entries in the repository time sensitive to accommodate the database of contemporaneous “real time” or “snapshot” time series that we are building for future research purposes. This paper will examine the different types of metadata gathered for time series data, and how this information is collected, stored, and made available to staff at the Federal Reserve Board.