An institution’s Library and Information Services (LIS)  should be able to offer its students, faculty and staff data migration services for data related to teaching, learning and research.  Uses should be able to import data they create from a variety of sources including databases, files containing data as text or containing embedded metadata (e.g. ID3 audio metadata) into supported curricular systems.  As well, users with the assistance of curricular technologists and/or support staff, should be able to map data from one source to another source and perform various data transformations during this migration process.

These data migration services should be an alternative to or augmentation of services related to web application provisioning and interoperability (see: Curricular Systems Interoperability)

Users should be able to create data in common applications such as a spreadsheets and be able to request a database to which they can migrate this data.  Once a database is set up to capture this data, a web application should be available that allows users (and/or Curricular Technologists) to upload their data file, specify its format and do the following:

• Map fields in their data file to fields in the database
• Add additional data to the database
• Aggregate many fields in their data file into one field in the database

Users should be able to get data from a database and write it to a text file or embed the data in a media files (e.g. image, audio, video).  a web application should be available that allows users (and/or Curricular Technologists) to connect to a database and do the following:

• Specify text file data formating such as field and line delimiters
• Specify which fields to write and their order
• Write field values from a database to lines in a text file with appropriate delimiters
• Embed field values from a database into a media files using appropriate metadata standard
• Aggregate many field values from a database into a single value and write that value to a file or embed in a media file
• Transform and augment database field values and write the resultant value to a file or embed in a media file

Example:
The Middlebury College Language Schools has a number of lexical databases which contain core vocabulary and/or dialogues for a given language as well as references to audio files that represent those vocabulary items and/or dialogues.  As these databases are updated and new audio resources created, the database values need to be embedded in the media files so that this metadata will be accessible from the media file itself by media players.