FORT Metadata Services

Research Task: 8327CKW.2.0
Task Manager: Diane Schneider

Metadata is created to document, organize, and maintain information about research projects, datasets, and scientific publications to help people locate the data they need and evaluate whether or how best to use it. Metadata also preserves data history so datasets can be re-used or adapted as needed after the producer is no longer available. Each year, FORT creates and serves new, non-publication project overview metadata records and theme/dataset metadata records on the NBII Clearinghouse Principal Node. All existing FORT publications metadata records, which are served on the NBII Clearinghouse Bibliographic Node, have been updated, and new records are created twice per year. To facilitate this work, we developed a database tool that uses information extracted from the USGS project database to create a significant portion of the non-publications overview metadata. The same tool is used to begin development of the detailed (non-publication) theme/dataset metadata, which is then supplemented with information provided by the associated principal investigators. We also continue to refine and enhance previously developed tools to more efficiently produce the publications metadata.

 For more information contact Diane Schneider