Metadata Evaluation and Improvement Case Studies

Ted Habermann, John Kozimor, Lindsay Powers, Sean Gordon, The HDF Group

Tools have been developed for evaluating metadata records and collections for completeness in terms of specific recommendations or organizational goals and to provide guidance for improving compliance of metadata with those recommendations. These tools have been applied using a several metadata recommendations (OGC-CSW, DataCite, NASA Unified Metadata Model) and metadata dialects used by several organizations:

1. Climate Data Initiative metadata from NASA DAACs in ECHO, DIF, and ISO 19115-2
2. US Geological Survey metadata from ScienceBase in CSDGM
3. ACADIS Metadata from NCAR’s Earth Observation Lab in ISO 19115-2.

The results of this work are designed to help managers understand metadata recommendations (e.g. OGC Catalog Services for the Web, DataCite, and others) and the impact of those recommendations in terms of the dialects used in their organizations (e.g. DIF, CSDGM , ISO). They include comparisons between metadata recommendations and dialect capabilities, scoring of metadata records in terms of amount of missing content, and identification of specific improvement strategies for particular collections. This information is included in the Earth Science Information Partnership (ESIP) Wiki to encourage broad dissemination and participation.