Geospatial Librarian

Issue: Keywords in a group of records within GeoNetwork were too specific and not normalized Challenge: Editing each record individually would be time consuming, since many keywords would have to be deleting one by one.  Additionally, the keywords were grouped in sections and some can not be deleted easily from the interface. Our project's CSW update process was adding new keywords, but not deleting existing ones, nor could it address the messy structure of the keyword sections. Solution: Download records, delete entire keyword node using Oxygen, re-upload, perform a CSW update to insert new keywords. ----- Overview This post focuses on the utility in Oxygen for deleting a node in an XML file.  I decided to use this technique because I had group of ISO 19139 files where the keyword section was corrupted with multiple nests, and the keywords themselves were not aligned with our preferred metadata vocabulary.  Deleting the sections manually in GeoNetwork did not ...

On May 26, several task force members attended the first  UMGEOCON , the Upper Midwest Geospatial Conference.  This is a new regional conference that encompasses GIS professionals from Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa.  Jaime Martindale and Karen Majewicz gave a presentation about the metadata workflow for GIS resources. Here is a link to the presentation as Google Slides.

The Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) is a framework that can be used to pull metadata records from enabled repositories.  The records are transferred in a simple Dublin Core XML format.  This is an open and well documented framework, and there are many tools available that can perform metadata harvests. The method for requesting the records uses a URL that has been set up by the repository.  Refining the request can come in the form of “Sets” or sub-collections, and “From” or “Until” for records added between a period of time.  Some repositories may have published their OAI-PMH URLs, but others may only release them upon request. The records are harvested as Dublin Core XML, but use a dedicated schema ( http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/oai_dc.xsd ), prefix (oai_dc), and namespace ( http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/oai_dc/ ) .  These may need to be transformed if importing the records into an editor. Here...

Note: This is the first in a series of posts that examines the next stage of the CIC GDDP project: incorporating maps. 18th Century Map of Ceylon (Sri Lanka), held at the John R. Borchert Map Library, University of Minnesota One of the exciting aspects of the CIC Geospatial Data Discovery project is that we are gathering geospatial resources in the form of both GIS records and scanned map images. These two types of resources differ from one another in terms of repositories and metadata standards. Most of our GIS records are from public agencies, such as a state’s department of natural resources and are described with the FGDC or ISO standard. Most of the maps are from University libraries and are described with the MARC or Dublin Core standard. Combining these resources into one portal presents challenges in to form of choosing compatible metadata standards and appropriate tools. The initial decision of the task force was to convert all resources into the ISO19...

This screencast video shows how to navigate the interface, find and select records, and adjust the editing views. It also shows how to locate the required metadata elements for the CIC profile of ISO19139;

]] Announcement: ArcGIS Toolbox for Batch Metadata Scripts available for download I have taken four of the scripts that I commonly use for the CIC project and bundled them into an ArcGIS toolbox.  This toolbox and the accompanying python scripts can be downloaded from GitHub and used in ArcGIS for Desktop.  Note: this is the first version and will likely be updated to correct mistakes and to add new tools. Click here for the GitHub Link Scripts Included: Translate FGDC to ArcGIS for Standalone XML file Calls the ESRI Translator tool to convert standalone XML files in FGDC CSDGM to the ArcGIS Metadata 1.0 Format. This tool should be used for standalone metadata files, because it does not perform any of the processes in the Upgrade Model, such as synchronization. Related Post Synchronize ArcGIS Metadata for Feature Classes Calls the Synchronize model to create or update a metadata file for a feature class in the ArcGIS Metadata 1.0 Format. Related Pos...

Issue: We want to have a copy of the ArcGIS metadata stored as XML for all GIS resources. Challenge: ArcGIS does not export to its own format.  This is a problem for geodatabases that store the metadata in tables, not XML Solution: Copy the XSLT "exact copy of" and create a new transformation tool that accesses it. ----------------------------- Today's post is about how to use ArcCatalog to export metadata into the native ArcGIS format.  Accessing this metadata as an XML file is straightforward for shapefiles, because the program automatically generates an ArcGIS format XML file and stores it with the shapefile.  However, metadata for geodatabases is stored in tables. ArcCatalog export options The export tool for ArcCatalog doesn't offer an option to export existing metadata in the ArcGIS format.  It does offer the options of exporting from ArcGIS format to FGDC or an ISO profile.  OR, it offers the options of exporting from FGDC o...