EML Best Practices for LTER Site Metadata

1. EML Best Practices forLTER Site Metadata EML Best Practices Committee (Corinna Gries, Margaret O’Brien, Ken Ramsey, Wade Sheldon)

2. Rationale • Considerable documentation for EML exists • EML Handbook: http://intranet.lternet.edu/eml/EMLHandbook.pdf • EML FAQ: http://knb.ecoinformatics.org/software/eml/eml-2.0.0/eml-faq.html • EML 2.0.0 documentation: http://knb.ecoinformatics.org/software/eml/ • Many IMs confused about best way to populate EML • Complex, modular schema with many optional elements • Documentation rich, but hard to approach • Multiple places to include many types of content • Concern: could lead to “ala carte” site-specific implementations

3. Rationale for a Best Practices Guide • Provide guidance to sites in their initial implementation of EML, and a roadmap for improving their implementation to achieve higher functionality

4. Rationale for a Best Practices Guide • Provide guidance to sites in their initial implementation of EML, and a roadmap for improving their implementation to achieve higher functionality • Identify useful subsets of the EML schema to support specific functionality tiers targeted by the LTER NIS Advisory Committee (NISAC)

5. Rationale for a Best Practices Guide • Provide guidance to sites in their initial implementation of EML, and a roadmap for improving their implementation to achieve higher functionality • Identify useful subsets of the EML schema to support specific functionality tiers targeted by the LTER NIS Advisory Committee (NISAC) • Maximize interoperability of LTER EML documents to facilitate data synthesis

6. Rationale for a Best Practices Guide • Provide guidance to sites in their initial implementation of EML, and a roadmap for improving their implementation to achieve higher functionality • Identify useful subsets of the EML schema to support specific functionality tiers targeted by the LTER NIS Advisory Committee (NISAC) • Maximize interoperability of LTER EML documents to facilitate data synthesis • Minimize heterogeneity of LTER EML documents to simplify development and re-use of software tools and style sheets

7. Process • Working group met at LNO in May 2004 • Discussed conclusions from 2003 SEV Workshop • Compared EML documents currently being produced by sites • Examined revised NISAC functionality matrix • Revised content recommendations for metadata “completeness” levels (aka tiers) • Outlined specific content recommendations for each level • Developed a demo metadata document for “dissection” in examples (FLS) • Began work on compiling a best practices “whitepaper”

8. Products • EML Best Practices whitepaper (in edit) • specific content recommendations by level • xml code fragments to illustrate each level • strategies for problematic elements • specific guidance about content that can be included at multiple levels (e.g. distribution, methods) • Sample Documents illustrating each Level • Real-world EML documents complying with most or all level 4-5 recommendations

9. Document Structure

10. Directions • Distribute the products on the IM Committee web page • Maintain mailing list for feedback (emlbestpractices@lternet.edu) • Make EML schema recommendations to eml-dev • ...