The Merriam-Powell Center for Environmental Research (MPCER) will be providing Metadata Training in Winter of 2006-7 for several tribal organizations in Arizona. This effort is funded through the 2006 NSDI CAP grant. Metadata training is based on the federal geographic data committee (FGDC) standardized metadata profile, Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata (CSDGM) and the National Biological Inventory Infrastructure (NBII) extension of the biological data profile (BDP).
Who should Attend?
Tribal members who use, develop, or manage geographic information systems (GIS) and spatial data. This may include managers, scientists, or technicians from local, county, tribal, university, federal or state agencies. The workshops are developed for people who have beginning to intermediate GIS experience.
Why Attend?
Increasing use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and integrated research projects has produced a demand for standardized documentation on existing and new geospatial datasets. Creating metadata or “data about data” facilitates data managment for federal, tribal, state agencies and researchers.
Documenting spatial data benefits both the producer and the end user. Delivery of spatial data products with metadata creates cost savings and efficiencies in an organization. The documentation of data by an individual or an organization gives the data its own bibliography. It makes that data independent of the individual or organization that created it, making it more useful and a more powerful tool to use again or to share with others. Documentation of data acquisition, development, manipulation and analysis or providing who, what, where, when, why and how of each spatial and non-spatial data is needed to share, disseminate and integrate individual datasets. Having full knowledge of the “life” of the data empowers the end user, whether it is a student, scientist or manager; eliminates the data developer from fielding numerous phone calls about the data; allows the data and metadata to be disseminated through a searchable metadata node; provides enough information to the end user for “repeatability” of the data process or to integrate it with other spatial and non-spatial data.
Metadata training may cover information on resources for metadata training, metadata standards, software and profile extensions, and learning about the existing metadata resource network for creation, development and dissemination in conjunction with MPCER's Colorado Plateau Metadata Clearinghouse and the Geospatial One-Stop.
