Items in bold and italics like this are necessary to comply with the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) standard.
Items in bold like this are necessary if you are filling out the section they are in. For example section 2.5, lineage, is not mandatory for the FGDC, but is recommended by FWS. If you chose to complete that section you need to complete all the items in this type ( or fill in N/A or unknown) to comply with the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) standard and related software.
ITEMS IN CAPS AND BOLD ARE NOT REQUIRED, BUT ARE ITEMS FWS GIS STEERING COMMITTEE MEMBERS FEEL WOULD ADD A GREAT DEAL TO THE DOCUMENTATION. WE WOULD LIKE PEOPLE TO DOCUMENT THEM FOR FWS METADATA IF POSSIBLE.
There are a number of items in regular print, some with numbers in front of them. Generally these are headings, and are needed to run the data through a compiler to create files to serve on the Internet or be searchable by the FGDC search engine. If we can keep data consistent with the FGDC, sharing the information with other agencies, partners, etc will be much easier. Other items in regular print are sample data.
Any explanatory notes are in italics
Most of this section is Mandatory to comply with the FGDC standard. It is basic identification information about the data set you have created. The data set may be one or multiple files; generally you will document one file at a time.
In some of the sections (for example 1.3 - Time Period) you will need to chose the option appropriate for your data and delete (if you are using the template) or ignore (if you are using a program) the others. This one is simple - you created the data on one day, several days, or a range of days. If it's one file, it's probably one day. Multiple files (like the NWI data sample) could be many dates or a range. Please note - in this sample all the selections have been left for you to view. In a real metadata file, only the applicable ones should be used.
Basic notes on data quality are very useful. Most GIS staff have wrestled with data that did not document what the attribute codes stood for, or files that did not match at the edges. Any items you can complete here would be useful.
This section can be very simple or very detailed. At a minimum we would like to know if the data is point, vector, raster, or some non-referenced data set! If you wish to go beyond that point, the type of file directs which other fields you need.
Section 4 is guaranteed to give a majority of GIS users in FWS either heartburn or a headache the first time they read it. It goes into very technical detail, including many items geographers may understand but most biologists have never heard of. There are, however, some important basic items here that should be documented. This is another mandatory if applicable section, but certainly some of it SHOULD be applicable!
Section 4 offers some choices depending on your data. You may have geographic data (lat/long - section 4.1), planar data (section 4.2 - includes UTM and state plane data), or local (table inches - some autocad type data). It will not be all of these at once. Your data entry is simplified, but the potential number of choices make the documentation look forbidding. In addition to the horizontal coordinates, some data needs the vertical coordinates. It may be river depth data, perhaps DEM or other topographic data - vertical coordinates are not listed here, but are in the base template if needed.
For this section an office would probably use either 5.1 or 5.2, depending on the amount of detail needed to describe the data, or the amount of detail available. If an office chose to give an overview description (5.2 ) of a vegetation layer, for example, they could also cite a reference such as the GAP or TNC vegetation classification standard to give the user further details about the data. If they chose to use 5.1, they could include all the details in the metadata. If the reference is widely available, doing an overview and referencing other documents is probably easier.
Basically, how can someone get the data from you? Is in "on-line"? Who do they contact? Your own circumstances will dictate what gets filled in here. If the distributor is the same as the contact person in Section 7, it could be left out here. Often, however, they will be different staff or offices. (Hint: if you want to enter the contact information here and sections 1 or 7, and the information is very similar, you can cut and paste in Windows. Just be sure to copy the headings and data for the section.)
Who documented the data, when and using what type of documentation? This can be important if the data was documented 10 years after it was created versus as it was created. The quality of the metadata will vary. Bold and italicized sections here are mandatory for the FGDC.
The following pages contain an outline of the basic data elements, with short "cheat sheet" type notes and sample data. These should be used only as guidelines. There is a related document listing all of the data elements, and another document that can be used as a template to create metadata. For extensive metadata creation you will probably want to use a tool such as metamaker (return to documentation list for details).
Continue on to metadata outline
For additional information regarding this Web page, contact Deb Southworth Green, in the Division of Information Resources and Technology Management, at Deb_Green@fws.gov
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Keywords=GIS, data, metadata
Last Modified January 02, 2001 03:01 PM