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NBII Metadata Activities

NBII Program

The NBII has been involved in metadata standards, creation, quality control, and hosting since the early 1990s. Standards such as: Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) Biological Data Profile, Dublin Core, Darwin Core, and Open GIS are all used within the Program.

The NBII Metadata Program includes: training sessions and workshops; metadata development tools; metadata creation services; quality control/metadata review; and an integrated FGDC based metadata clearinghouse that provides access to over 40 distributed biological metadata clearinghouse nodes (http://mercury.ornl.gov/nbii/) and simultaneous access to all metadata content through the NBII BioBot Search Tool (http://search.nbii.gov).

NBII Metadata Quickfinder

Red-eyed Tree Frog in a tree
NBII Image Gallery

What is metadata? - Metadata is simply data about data.

Metadata can be structured or unstructured and is often used to describe, summarize, and/or aid in the human and/or machine process of information.

NBII uses:

FGDC Biological Data Profile - describing and documenting datasets

Dublin Core+ - describing and documenting web-sites, images, publications, and other web resources

Darwin Core - digitizing and sharing of collection information

Open GIS - in support of sharing, registering, and interoperability of geospatial data layers.