 Metadata Progress and Plans for Moving Forward
Recent discussions of the Executive Committee have focused on how to make metadata easier and more useful to NeCODP partners while continuing to build on the excellent work already accomplished by partners over the past year. In particular there is a need to provide focus for the upcoming Metadata Workshop planned in conjunction with the annual meeting in June 2011. The workshop will specifically focus on the new ISO metadata standards, authoring tools, and new ways that metadata can be easily published to the web.
The Executive Committee has been focused on two current metadata topics which are by no means mutually exclusive. First, in alignment with emerging Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) Data Management and Communication (DMAC) standards is the utilization of the ISO19115 and ISO10119 standards for describing both data sets and the overlying services by which they are made available. Second is the exploration a new way to publish metadata to the web via KML, Google's ubiquitous spatial data standard, now an official Open Geographic Consortium (OGC) standard. Both initiatives allow data providers to park the resulting metadata data in Web Accessible Folders which can be harvested and indexed by the major internet search engines such as Google, bing, and Yahoo.
Recently Paul Boudreau of Coastal and Ocean Information Network Atlantic (COINAtlantic), working with the Massachusetts Ocean Partnership (MOP) and Applied Science Associates (ASA) has run pilot studies that publish metadata records embedded within KML files. Once in a Web Accessible Folder (WAF), these files become readily discoverable by search engines. With proof of concept in hand, we now need new technical guidance, cookbooks, and tools to allow the creation and publishing and transformation between the various metadata approaches. In particular the past work by the NeCODP utilizing centralized registries, such as the GCMD, must be leveraged via automated tools to create these new WAF formats.
All of these approaches focus on making metadata easier to create, easier to publish, and ultimately, more discoverable to potential data users.
Contacts:
Dan Sampson/MA CZM/617-626-117/daniel.sampson@state.ma.us
Eric Bridger / GMRI/ 207-228-1662 / ebridger@gmri.org
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