Geospatial Librarian

These charts list the most useful metadata tools/models, when to use them, and problems they may cause. For more information, see the ArcGIS online documentation. Name Synchronize Type Tool When to Use When there is no metadata file yet or the dataset has changed. Description Uses the dataset to create or update technical metadata. This script will automatically run when you open the dataset in ArcCatalog in the Description tab (this is set in the ArcCatalog Options - Metadata tab. It will create or update many fields, including extent, coordinate system, geometry, format, size, and attribute field names. Since this script can run automatically when opening the item in ArcCatalog, it is not often necessary to call the script manually. However, if you have the option to run automatically turned off in the options, it can be called to update the item. It helpful to use for batch technical metadata creation or updating with an ArcPy script that iterates ...

The GeoBlacklight plugin for Omeka includes a custom feature in the Spatial Coverage field. A user can type in a place term, which will query GeoNames, and produce a dropdown list of options.  The user selects a value from the list, and this will pull in the GeoNames URI. The user can select multiple place names using multiple inputs.   A second feature of the plugin is that it can pull the bounding box coordinates from the GeoNames official record.  This is triggered during export to the GeoBlacklight schema JSON file if the Bounding Box element for the item is empty.  Although users can add multiple place names, only the first input will be queried for this function. When you begin typing in this input, it will query the GeoNames API and pull suggestions for defined place names.    NOTE:  This feature is constrained by the fact that our site is hosted on an https site, but the GeoNames API query is on http.  This means that your brows...

Technical Metadata for GIS Data Technical metadata can be programmatically extracted from the dataset. Step 1: Generate or Update the Technical Metadata How to generate an ArcGIS 1.0 XML file for a dataset one at a time. Open ArcCatalog and use the Catalog Tree to navigate to the location of the dataset. Click on the dataset in the catalog tree. Open the Description tab in the main window.  This action will update or create a new metadata file in the ArcGIS Metadata 1.0 Format.   How to generate an ArcGIS 1.0 XML file for a batch of files. Download the datasets and unzip all of the files into a flat folder.   With 7-Zip, use the option without the “*/”, which will keep the files in separate folders Folders can be flattened with the following command line script (Mac tested):   find [DIRECTORY] -mindepth 2 -type f -exec mv -i '{}' [DIRECTORY] ';' Download a zip of the project’s Custom ArcGIS Toolbox of Batch Metadata Scripts. Unzip t...

There are two options for how to do this. Option 1:  Obtain standalone XML files and use the FGDC to ArcGIS Translator tool Option 2:  Download the dataset and use the ArcGIS Update tool Before you begin: Download a zip of the project’s Custom ArcGIS Toolbox of Batch Metadata Scripts. Unzip the folder into a location that you can access from within ArcCatalog. Option 1: Standalone XML files Use the Esri Translator with FGDC2Esri_ISO selected on standalone XML files. All metadata except the reference system information will be retained. 1. Place the XML files in their own folder.  Make sure that no other types of files are in the folder. 2. Open ArcCatalog and use the Catalog Tree to navigate to the downloaded folder of custom scripts. 3. Expand the toolbox and select the tool called “Translate FGDC to ArcGIS for Standalone XML file” 4. The input is only the folder containing the XML files.  Details about the tool: The input is a fol...