The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory is a UK National Facility that handles a considerable amount of experimental research, and operates many instruments that generate large volumes of data such as the ISIS Pulsed Neutron Source, Central Laser Facility, and Diamond Light Source. It has developed a Core Scientific Metadata Model (CSMD) for the management of the data resources of the facilities in a uniform way. This talk discusses the emerging opportunities opened up by the availability of systematically managed data in a large laboratory setting and the technical barriers of making extensive use of them in real world open data infrastructure developments. The latest developments of CSMD will be presented to highlight the current direction we are undertaking in the context of the PaNData-ODI project, a collaborative European project involving thirteen major world class research laboratories that operate one or more neutron or photon sources in Europe.