Documenting Your Own Data

Module 2: Documenting Your Own Final Project

Part II: Documenting Your Own Data

A. Assess Metadata in Your Local Area

Your story:
You should have made a couple contacts in your local area by now, whether by phone, email, or in person. You should also have some sense about what data, if any, exist. If you are lucky, the data you acquire will be documented properly; they will have complete metadata that conforms to a standard.

Questions you might ask:

• Does your organization create and maintain metadata?
• Who is tasked with creating metadata?
• What metadata standard do you use?
• Is there money in your budget earmarked specifically for metadata?
• Are the metadata in a digital form?
• Would you be willing to fill in some of the gaps in data documentation so I can tell a more complete story to my class?

B. Take a Look at Some Good Examples of Data Dictionaries

Data dictionaries are an essential part of good metadata. They are the narrative description of the fields of the database, particularly the attribute data. I have found that detailed and complete data dictionaries are hard to find. We will obviously not be creating extremely detailed data dictionaries in this class, but it is important to see some examples.

• SPC GIS DATA DICTIONARY
  The data dictionary of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission (SPC), which is the regional planning agency serving the Pittsburgh 10-county area.
• ROADWAY INVENTORY SEGMENTS
  A Pennylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) data dictionary for road segments.

C. Take a Look at Metadata for Layers in The National Map or other Online Web-based Portals

In this part of the lesson, we will be working with clearinghouses. It is quite likely that some of the data you will need for your final project will come from one of the many online data sources. Obviously, when downloading any data from clearinghouses, metadata are an extremely important component. Without some metadata, you may not be able to work with the data at all. Take a look at the metadata for one of the layers you might be interested in from The National Map.

1. Open The National Map Viewer.
2. Drag a box around your state with the Zoom In tool. If you don't live in North America, pick any place.
3. Click the Layer Metadata or Map Information tab.
4. Pick a layer and include information about what standard is used, scale, purpose, date, and data quality. Post this information in list form and be sure to include the layer name. This is just to get a sense about what types of data are currently part of The National Map.

Here are a few of the sites from which I downloaded data:

• The National Map
  There are quite a few national layers available here. I decided to acquire a roads layer.
• GIS Data Depot
  I acquired TIGER data here.
• Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access (PASDA)
  This is Pennsylvania's data clearinghouse. You've been exposed to it in previous classes. There is a wealth of data here. Since I downloaded road data from the previous two sites, I decided to acquire road data from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.

Looking at the data I acquired from clearinghouses is optional. It is merely a glance into my project. Again, I've been acquiring data for my local area as I want to make sure that the items in the deliverables section can be done with a reasonable amount of effort in a reasonable amount of time.

1. Unzip the files for lesson 3. These include an ArcMap map document and data I downloaded from the above sites.
2. Open ArcCatalog and browse the metadata (or lack thereof) for the layers in the map document. I had to define two of the layers with information from the site in order to get the data to line up. I didn't edit the metadata in any other way.
3. Open the clearinghouse_data.mxd map document. If the streets layer isn't appearing, you can set the data source by right-clicking on the layer and choosing Data > Set Data Source. It can be found in the Centre_county_basemap folder.
4. Browse in and out and turn layers off and on. I found this to be an interesting lesson in accuracy. I have the layers arranged from most accurate to least accurate. I can see why metadata are so important. If someone is using a roads layer and doesn't know where it originated or what the accuracy is, the data could be worthless for their application.

D. Deliverables

This module is one week in length. Please refer to the course Calendar tab, above, for the due date.

1. Readings:

Required:

• GEOSPATIAL METADATA
  A very light read that explains geospatial metadata in simple terms.
• METADATA QUICK GUIDE
  A short reference guide for writing quality metadata.
• UNDERSTANDING METADATA
  A National Information Standards Organization (NISO) publication that helps to explain metadata.
• CONTENT STANDARD FOR DIGITAL GEOSPATIAL METADATA WORKBOOK
  A guide that includes how to read and use the CSDGM standard with graphical and textual representation of the content information, a description of profiles and user defined metadata extensions, and some metadata examples.This is a long piece and some of it can be scanned rather than read thoroughly, however, you should familiarize yourself with its general ideas.
• The EPA Metadata Editor in Use

Recommended:

• PUBLISHING TO GEODATA.GOV (CREATING AND PUBLISHING METADATA IN SUPPORT OF GEOSPATIAL ONE-STOP AND NSDI)
  A document to guide you through the process of publishing metadata online. This document will be most useful for the optional activity in Weeks 9 and 10.

2. Post a project write-up to your cumulative document or e-portfolio including:

If you have yet to post your work from week 1, do that now.

• metadata for an existing National Map layer
• documentation of the status of the metadata for the data you have started to acquire for your project (if no data exist, create metadata for future layers)
• comments on whether those metadata conform to FGDC/ISO standards
• ideas for what should be included in a data dictionary for the data acquired (or those that will be acquired)
• Continue to compile your digital rolodex. List the contacts you made this week and explain how they helped or what they contributed to your plan.

3. Discuss the weekly topic on the discussion forum.

That's it for Part II...and Lesson 2!

You have just completed module 2.

Don't forget...if you have any questions, feel free to post them to the Lesson 2 Discussion Forum.