USFWS Science Applications Metadata Guidance

A guide to mdEditor and ScienceBase for Science Applications

Introduction

This manual describes the requirements and best practices for the creation of high-quality and consistent metadata records for projects and products for USFWS Science Applications (SA) Program. These metadata requirements conform to the standardized metadata format agreed upon by the SA Data Management Working Group and meet USFWS policy requirements for data management. This metadata is aggregated and organized in the SA Science Catalog, where SA projects and products are discoverable, accessible, and usable.

USFWS Data Management Integration

Metadata is an essential element of the Data Management Lifecycle. Creating metadata is the principal component of the Maintain step. Publishing metadata in an approved repository (e.g., ScienceBase) is crucial to the Access and Archive steps.

Overall guidance about USFWS Data Management is in the USFWS Data Management Handbook.

Metadata and mdEditor

The metadata editing tool used to create and support metadata requirements is mdEditor. This tool was initially developed by the Alaska Data Integration Working Group and adopted by SA. The mdEditor application is under constant development. Consequently, there may be some minor discrepancies between screenshots in this guidance and the current version of mdEditor.

This manual refers to the creation of SA metadata specifically. If you want information on the creation of other metadata records using mdEditor, or more information in general, please refer to the mdEditor User Manual.

Who Should Use this Manual

This guide is for anyone creating or updating metadata for SA-related projects and products. The primary purpose is to describe in detail how to develop metadata for items for inclusion in the SA Science Catalog, but the tool can also be used to track any project or funding.

The metadata requirements described here apply to science projects and products that were funded by SA (for more details, see the Project, Products, and Contacts section).

How to Use this Manual

The recommended way to use this manual is directly accessing the pages from the internet. By doing so, you guarantee you are using the current version. This is a living document and will be updated as needed. The online version will also have the best functionality and graphical display.

This document will continue to be updated regularly and publishing using the GitHub Repository. Please refresh this manual every time you open it to ensure you are viewing the most recent version.

Guidance was last updated: 25 November, 2024.

Providing Feedback

If you would like to provide feedback (e.g., comments, suggestions, etc.) about this guidance, you can use this online form.

If you’d like to give direct feedback through Github, please consider reporting an issue or submitting edits through a pull request. However, in order to access these functions, you will be required to sign in or create an account with Github.