Letter for the Go-Geo! Metadata Providers
The Go-Geo! portal project is part of
an important first step towards geo-spatial data sharing
amongst the UK tertiary academic community. Once fully
functional, the portal will not only serve as an information
outlet for UK academia, but also provide a link to external
resources inside the UK and across the international
community.
As an expert in your field, and knowledgeable
of geo-spatial data, it seems likely that you will have
had to create data for your research efforts. The Go-Geo!
portal site will provide the opportunity to display
your metadata to academic and geo-spatial communities,
especially those datasets that you may choose to make
available to users. Eventually, the same opportunities
will fall on other researchers who produce datasets.
Over time, the portal site will become home to hundreds
of metadata records. The portal will also serve as a
direct link to numerous external data sources. The basis
for this important information network for geo-spatial
datasets would begin with your effort. In the event
that the Go-Geo! portal does not become a service, we
will offer participating organisations and individuals
the opportunity to transfer their metadata files from
the Go-Geo! portal to the AGI’s GIgateway web-based
service.
Work is in train to develop an online
metadata tool that will facilitate the creation of metadata.
Unfortunately, at the present time, the resources aren’t
available to complete this task. As a short-term remedy,
a metadata questionnaire form has been created for producing
metadata files. The form is available in MS Word document
or MS Excel spreadsheet format, and contains 69 elements
and fields. It is based on an extension of the NGDF
profile and has been developed and evaluated for UK
higher and further education (HE/FE). The HE/FE profile
elements have also been cross-matched to elements in
the ISO 19115 and Federal Geographic Digital Committee
(FGDC) standards. This exercise will address any changes
or substitutions that the Association for Geographic
Information (AGI) may propose for the existing NGDF
standard.
Completion of the form should be straightforward.
Moreover, I am very happy to assist in any way I can.
Most of the HE/FE profile elements will require minimal
input. Only 27 elements are mandatory of which 12 require
only contact information. I would hope to be able to
complete several of these elements on your behalf as
well as converting existing documentation that you may
have created for your datasets. Of course, the final
draft would require your approval prior to publication.
Once your metadata files have been completed, they will
be transferred and stored on the Go-Geo! portal site,
ready for presentation at the workshop in late January
2003.
Finally, should the Go-Geo! portal
site become a service, efforts will continue to promote
metadata implementation across the UK academic community.
It is hoped that a proper, user-friendly metadata tool
will be made available for documentation; metadata and
geo-portal workshops will be offered to provide training
opportunities; and attempts will be made to place a
significance on metadata creation through listing metadata
titles and authors in journals and other professional
publications.
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