Metadata Tools

From Ocean Teacher Library

Metadata Tools

Creation Tools

Metadata “toolkits” available to help create metadata. These tools can be stand-alone applications, internet applications, or integrated into geospatial applications. Tools may consist of commercial, open-source or self-developed systems and may also form part of operational GIS systems which can extract aspects of the metadata automatically from the data itself.

Metadata creation tools fall into several categories ^[1] :

Templates allow a user to enter metadata values into pre-set fields that match the element set being used. The template will then generate a formatted set of the element attributes and their corresponding values.
Mark-up tools structure the metadata attributes and values into the specified schema language, for example XML.
Extraction tools automatically create metadata from an analysis of the digital resource. The quality of the metadata extracted can vary significantly and should be considered as an aid to creating metadata. The resulting metadata should always be manually reviewed and edited.
Conversion tools translate one metadata format to another.

There are a variety of free and commercial software tools available to support metadata development which offer a range of features and capabilities. The Wisconsin Land Information Clearinghouse has produced a summary of most of the known metadata tools used for documenting geospatial data and serving geospatial metadata.^[2] The US FGDC has also prepared a review of available ISO Metadata Editors.^[3]

GeoNetwork opensource

GeoNetwork is a standards based geographic metadata catalogue system to manage spatially referenced resources. It provides powerful metadata editing and search functions as well as an embedded interactive web map viewer which can be used to visualize the data described by the metadata ^[4]. GeoNetwork supports the principle of “federated catalogues” used to query from one catalogue client metadata from different catalogues.

GeoNetwork features include:

Search access to local and distributed geospatial catalogues
Upload and download of data, graphics, documents, pdf files and any other content type
An interactive Web Map Viewer to combine Web Map Services from distributed servers
Online editing of metadata with a powerful template system
Native support for ISO19115/ISO19119/ISO19139, FGDC and Dublin Core formatted metadata
Scheduled harvesting and synchronization of metadata between distributed catalogues
Group and user management
Multi-lingual user interface

GeoNetwork opensource is based on the principles of Free and Open Source Software and can be downloaded directly from the GeoNetwork website or through OceanTeacher's Marine Data Handling and Editing Tools.

References

Additional Resources

Tools References. Comprehensive list, including metadata tools, from MMI.

Subsections of this Article

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Information about this article

Short title: Tools to create metadata

Description: There are a variety of tools to assist with such tasks as creating metadata and editing metadata.

Expertise level: beginner

Author: Greg Reed

Approval status: approved

Approved by: noone

Last change: 2009-11-24

Subsection of: Creating Metadata

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[0] Understanding Metadata (NISO, 2004)

[1] Metadata Tools for Geospatial Data (WiscLINC)

[2] ISO Metadata Editor Review (FGDC)

[3] GeoNetwork opensource Community website

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