The information below was derived from the NOAA download page for the Metadata Collector Extension, hosted on the ESRI federal homepage, and from the help file within the extension. It is being duplicated here in different formats to increase the ease of use for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service staff and other visitors to our web site. Questions on the extension itself should be directed towards the NOAA staff listed below.
Download a zipped version of the extension, avmeta2.zip here. For the most current version, please visit the NOAA page referenced below; be aware that the extension is not compressed on that page, and will take longer to download. This version was downloaded from the NOAA site on August 5, 2002.
The ArcView Metadata Collector is an easy to use software application which can be utilized by any ArcView user without having to fully understand the Federal Geographic Data Committee's (FGDC) "Content Standards for Digital Geospatial Metadata." The Tool provides a dialog for creating FGDC compliant metadata for any data type supported by ArcView including ARC/INFO coverages, ArcView shapefiles, as well as any supported image formats. The tool automatically extracts information (metadata) such as bounding coordinates, map projections, and attribute information. In addition, the tool stores information into .dbf files that can be edited, if needed, and reused for subsequent metadata records. The application generates output in both text and HTML formats. If you are creating metadata for an ARC/INFO coverage, you also have the option of generating an INFO file that will become part of that coverage. Link to the NOAA Metadata Tools Page.
Please read this Disclaimer
When finished, please read Important Installation Information section
Original coding was completed on August 1, 1997 by Jeff Cowen and David Stein, Technology Planning and Management Corporation contractors at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Coastal Services Center (CSC). The development of these scripts was funded in whole by the NOAA CSC (Contract Number 50-EANC-5-00062). This code is not supported by the authors or by the NOAA CSC. Feel free to use or modify this code or any part of this code, with the knowledge that the authors and the NOAA CSC are not responsible for any of the ramifications of using this code.
Important Installation Information
The following are instructions for loading the extension into ArcView 3.x for Windows. Copy the file "metadata.avx" into the "ext32" directory under your ArcView 3.0 program directory. Typically, this will be c:\esri\av_gis30\arcview\ext32. In a UNIX environment, copy the file into the "ext" directory under your directory. On a Macintosh, the directory structure will probably be \applications\esri\av_gis30\ext. When you start ArcView you will have an extension called "Metadata Collection Tool v 2.0." This will add a new drop down menu with five items to the "View" Graphical User Interface. The "Collect Metadata" menu item starts the metadata collection dialog, The "View Metadata" menu item allows you to view metadata; The "Create HTML from Existing Metadata" menu item allows a user to create an HTML file from an existing metadata record, the "Metadata Help" menu item brings a help page, and the "Link to FGDC " menu item links to the Federal Geographic Data Committee web site .
Contact information for NOAA
For additional information regarding this extension, please email the NOAA Coastal Services Center Clearinghouse at:
clearinghouse@csc.noaa.gov and type "metadata collector" in the subject filed of
the email.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Coastal Services Center
E-mail comments to csc@csc.noaa.gov
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Before Running the Program
1) Add the data set that metadata will be collected for to a VIEW.
2) This tool will work on any data set that can be added to an ArcView View document,
including: shapefiles, Arc/Info coverages, supported image formats, etc.
3) Set the working directory for the PROJECT to a directory where dBase files can be
created. The working directory for the PROJECT is set from the Project menu/properties
option, on the PROJECT GUI. These dBase files will be used to store information, so that
it can be referenced in the future (for example contact information that may be repeated
in many files).
File Naming Convention
1) Two types of files will be created, an ASCII text file, and an HTML (Hyper Text Markup
Language) file . If any problems are found, these files can be edited.
2) The metadata record is written to the directory where the source data (shapefile, etc)
is stored.
3) If the data source is a shapefile, the output metadata will be the base name of the
data set, with a ".met" extension. So if the data set is roads.shp, the metadata
record will be roads.met.
4) If the data source is an Arc/Info coverage, the output metadata record will be the
coverage name with "p" appended if the input is a polygon, an "l" if
the coverage is a line type, and a "pt" if the coverage is a point type. This
naming convention was chosen to handle metadata that is written for a coverage that might
include both lines and polygons, for example. A ".met" extension is then added
to the file name.
Basic Flow of the tool
1) The first time that the program is run the user will be prompted to enter data. In many
cases the information that is entered will be stored in dBase files that are created in
the project working directory (see below for a listing of the files that are created). If
any data entry problems are discovered, these dBase files can be edited, using ArcView's
TABLE editing tools.
2) The user will be asked to provide an "ID" for the information that is being
entered. This "ID" can be used to retrieve information on future iterations of
the program. For example the user may have created three "contacts" to choose
from when, collecting Contact_Information.
3) The next time that the program is run, if an entry already exists for a certain
metadata section, the user will be presented with a list of "IDs" to choose
from. If the user chooses an "ID" from the list the information is written to
the metadata record. If the user does not select an "ID" from the list, they
will be prompted to enter the information and that new information will be written to the
metadata record and to the dBase file, so that it can be accessed in the future.
4) After all of the metadata information has been collected the user will be asked if they
want to save an HTML version of the file.
5) After the metadata record has been collected, the user can click on the "Frame
Text" icon next to "M" icon or choose "Display Metadata" from the
Metadata pull down menu, to display the text version of the metadata record for all active
themes that have metadata records.
A LIST of POTENTIAL dBASE Files and the sections they relate to:
origin.dbf - originator information (IDENTIFICATION_INFORMATION)
publicat.dbf - publisher and larger_work information (IDENTIFICATION_INFORMATION)
citation.dbf - other_citation_details (IDENTIFICATION_INFORMATION)
abstract.dbf - abstract (IDENTIFICATION_INFORMATION)
purpose.dbf - purpose (IDENTIFICATION_INFORMATION)
contact.dbf - point_of_contact (IDENTIFICATION_INFORMATION)
attaccur.dbf - attribute_accuracy_report (DATA_QUALITY_INFORMATION)
logcon.dbf - logical_consistency_report (DATA_QUALITY_INFORMATION)
comprep.dbf - completeness_report (DATA_QUALITY_INFORMATION)
horpos.dbf - horizontal_positional_accuracy (DATA_QUALITY_INFORMATION)
verpos.dbf - vertical_positional_accuracy (DATA_QUALITY_INFORMATION)
lineage.dbf - lineage_information (DATA_QUALITY_INFORMATION)
socon.dbf - source_contribution (DATA_QUALITY_INFORMATION)
process.dbf - process_steps (DATA_QUALITY_INFORMATION)
project.dbf - Horizontal_Coordinate_System_Definition (SPATIAL_REFERENCE_INFORMATION)
distrib.dbf - distribution_information (DISTRIBUTION_INFORMATION)
resource.dbf - resource_discription (DISTRIBUTION_INFORMATION)v referenc.dbf -
metadata_reference_information (METADATA_REFERENCE_INFORMATION)
metacon.dbf - metadata_contact_information (METADATA_REFERENCE_INFORMATION)
For additional information regarding this Web page, contact Chris Lett, in the Division of Information Resources and Technology Management, at Chris_Lett@fws.gov
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Keywords=GIS, data, metadata, extension, ArcView
Last Modified August 5, 2002