FGDC and NBII Metadata for NODC

1. FGDC and NBII Metadata for NODC Review materials for NODC Metadata Team members. This information is derived, and occasionally copied directly, from materials available from the National Geographic Data Committee Metadata website at http://www.fgdc.gov/metadata/ or the National Biological Information Infrastructure website at http://www.nbii.gov/datainfo/metadata/standards/index.html Donald W. Collins, NOAA/NESDIS/NODC, July 24, 2001 Last revised on 3/25/03

2. Major sections of the CSDGM • Identification Information • data set title, area covered, keywords, purpose, abstract, access and use restrictions • Data Quality Information • horizontal and vertical accuracy assessment, data set completeness and lineage • Spatial Data Organization Information • raster, vector, or an indirect (e.g. address) link to location • Spatial Reference Information • lat/long, coordinate system, or map projection • Entity and Attribute Information • definitions of the attributes of the data set • Distribution Information • distributor, file format of data, off-line media types, on-line link to data, fees • Metadata Reference Information • who created the metadata and when

3. ‘Minor sections’ of the CSDGM • Citation Information • originator, title, publication date, publisher • Time Period Information • single date, multiple dates, range of dates • Contact Information • contact person and/or organization, address, phone, email • The minor sections are never used alone, but are always inserted into one of the major sections as a block. Because they are used multiple times, it made the content standards more compact to define them separately. Contact Information, in particular, is a section of which a site might have several instances, and common to all or many metadata documents. This situation may be used to advantage in site specific metadata template documents, or database based metadata tools.