Old Metadata News

If you missed the developments in metadata tools and resources when they happened, here is where you can find old 'news' formerly listed on the Metadata Tools for Geospatial Data web page (six months or longer ago). Yup, its oxymoronic.

2005

11/24/2005 Daniel Berhanu, Geoinformation Assistant at UN Economic Commission for Africa reminded me of the availability of the Enraemed metadata tool. This tool incorporates CSDGM, ISO, Dublin Core and GILS metadata standards, but currently only exports CSDGM metadata. The software has apparently been perched at version 1.0.2 since late 2002, but there is currently a proposed project plan (by Jan-Kees Schakel of Chain Freelance International Consultancy Services) to bring the tool up to the the latest ISO standard, add wishlist items and functions, and eradicate bugs.
11/23/05 11/23/05 Alberto Amaro, the Remote Sensing Software Manager at Instituto Nacional de Tecnica Aeroespacial (INTA) revealed the availability of a new (3.0) version of the ISO Metadata Editor (IME). Thanks to Marco Boeringa of Nieuwland Automatisering who kindly shared this news.
10/5/2005 Piergiorgio Cipriano of CORE Soluzioni Informatiche advised me of the development and availability of Repository Manager, an intelligent ISO metadata entry and management software. Currently the tool is only available in an Italian language version, but an English version is planned. The content of several informative emails from Piergiorgio have been summarized.
6/20/2005 Marco Boeringa (Nieuwland Automatisering) announced the availability of Theme Browser 4.0 beta on the metadata listserver. Theme Browser is an ArcCatalog-like metadata viewer for Arcview 3.x. New in this edition is the ability to view metadata stored in an ArcSDE Geodatabase.
6/16/2005 Sharon Shin forwarded an announcement from Jeremy Cothran regarding beta-testing of Meta-Door. This is a web application for importing, creating, validating and publishing FGDC metadata and information describing 'platforms,' 'sensors' and their data.
4/5/2005 Reference to Metavist 2005 found on NBII Metadata Tools page. Metavist is an editor for CSDGM (1998) and NBII 1999 Biological Data Profile extended metadata that imports and exports XML metadata. The technical report / user manual accompanying this tool is excellent. For example, it includes good treatment of the issues of importing and exporting XML metadata.

2004

4/5/2005 Reference to Metavist 2005 found on NBII Metadata Tools page. Metavist is an editor for CSDGM (1998) and NBII 1999 Biological Data Profile extended metadata that imports and exports XML metadata. The technical report / user manual accompanying this tool is excellent. For example, it includes good treatment of the issues of importing and exporting XML metadata.
12/18/2004 MetaScribe found on NOAA Coastal Services Center website. They recommend it for building metadata records for collections of data that are very similar, but not "for the creation of multiple metadata records with little redundant content."
12/1/2004 The Metadata Tools for Geospatial Data web pages were relocated to a new server. It will take a while to find the box with the remote control and the teapot, so have a little patience while we are unpacking.
11/1/2004 Marco Boeringa of Nieuwland Automatisering announced the release of the Theme Browser 3.1 to the metadata list. It provides an 'ArcCatalog-like' interface to search and view dataset metadata produced under six different metadata standards, but does not itself provide tools to edit or create metadata. Marco provided this feature summary in the announcement.
9/3/2004 The KaR Metadata Toolkit developed by the British Geological Survey was reported to the metadata list by Doug Nebert. Apparently it is a web based metadata entry, search, and publishing suite of applications that supports 'Core ISO 19115 metadata.'
4/8/2004 Jeroen Ticheler of FAO (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization) reported a metadata catalog portal that FAO developed under LGPL license on SourceForge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/geonetwork/), and which is the basis for websites at FAO, the United Nations World Food Programme as well as a number of their regional bureaus, e.g. http://vam.wfp.org/geonetwork/srv/en/main.search. It's based on ISO19115, allows one to edit metadata through the web, and has an OGC WMS (lat/lon Degree) embedded (optional).

2003

12/2/2003 Frank Roberts' Three Tab Metadata Editor for ArcCatalog was mentioned in the ESRI ArcGIS Desktop Forum. This very slimmed down editor adresses Identification_Information, Contact_Information, and Source_Information. It apparently served the purpose of the Coeur d'Alene Tribe for metadata entry and editing in an ArcSDE database, but appears to be too abbreviated to be of application to most users who also have access to the FGDC Editor supplied with ArcCatalog.
10/30/2003 Theme Browser announced to metadata list by Nieuwland Automatisering (Wageningen, the Netherlands). It is a multi-purpose utility extension for ArcView 3.2+. Importantly for this listing it provides the ability to search a filesystem for GIS data and metadata, and to display those metadata (including XML styled by an XSL document).
10/2/2003 The 'Powered by Metadata' symbol designed by those great folks at Minnesota'a Land Management Information Center hasn't previously been mentioned here, but it is long overdue. T-shirts's anyone?
10/2/2003 A tool (.dll) to view ArcCatalog metadata in ArcMap according user selected style sheet was developed by John Banning of ESRI and is referred to in an ESRI Discussion forum.
8/12/2003 NPS Metadata Tools Extension for ArcGIS found referred to in an ESRI Discussion forum. Highlights: batch import/export of metadata into from ArcCatalog, fix for attribute scrambling when imported metadata don't have same number and order of attributes that ArcCatalog expects
7/31/2003 XMLInput found referred to in a Scope of Work for 120 Cities imagery. It is an XML (sic) metadata editor that can create commented metadata templates and standalone metadata documents according to a selected DTD.
7/31/2003 The Metadata Validation Service is Peter Schweitzer's online implementation of mp. It improves upon the first (but now out of service) Metadata Validation Service implemented years ago by Chuck Stein.
3/22/2003 MPBatch reviewed
2/18/2003 MPBatch, a GUI interface to mp and cns, is announced to metadata-l.

2002

8/3/2002 The OpenGIS Consortium has made available a Power Point pictorial tour through three ISO Metadata Tools - M³Cat, Enraemed, and ArcCatalog.
7/19/2002 The Intra-governmental Group on Geographic Information (IGGI), UK has published The Principles of Good Metadata Management. (Thanks to Jon Makin, ESRI, UK for the news tip) .
6/8/2002 DBFmeta reviewed. This tool rocks! It is an intelligent metadata tool that produces a snippet of Entity_and_Attribute_Information metadata by statistical analysis of the values contained in the fields of a .dbf file. It also produces a detailed report of attribute frequency, enabling the detection of dirt in attributes.

2001

11/09/01 IMAGIN announces that the new version 2.11c of the Datalogr metadata tool is now available for free download.
10/20/01 ESRI announces 'Protecting Your Investment in Data with Metadata' as a new course on the ESRI Virtual Campus. The course ($100 cost) emphasizes the use of ESRI's ArcCatalog as a metadata management tool and requires an 8.1 version of ESRI software (ArcView, ArcEditor, or ArcInfo).
8/24/01 Ian Gillespie of the Meteorological Service of Canada announces metadata.aml to the metadata-l listserver. The AML is an automated metadata extraction tool for ArcInfo coverages and GRIDs and is available as a free download.
7/31/01 Ireland's GAMMA Tools announces free trial download of a suite of six add-on tools for MapInfo; one the tools is 'MetaData Manager.'
6/18/01 Intergraph announces acquisition of entire metadata product line (SMMS, SMMS for Geomedia, and Geoconnect Geodata Management Server) from RTSe USA. Bruce Westcott will assist Intergraph with technical support for their new acquisition and to define future product directions.
5/17/01 GeoSnapannounces version 1.3 of their Theme Locator Tool for ArcView. It purports to find ArcInfo coverages, shape files, and CAD drawing files, then makes the list available to add through a Theme Locator Menu.
4/25/01 Serge Kéna-Cohen of Intélec Géomatique related that their latest metadata tool, M³Cat, is available. This free multilingual tool supports FGDC, GILS, NBII and international metadata standards and stores metadata in Microsoft Access or Oracle database tables. Here is the FAQ.
1/24/01 Peter Schweitzer releases DBFmeta, a metadata robot that interrogates .dbf files, gets their statistics and creates metadata snippets for range and enumerated domains based on what it finds. This sort of 'intelligent' feature has never before been available in a publicly distributed metadata tool. Let's see: mp, xtme, cns, tkme, err2html, mq, DBFmeta... damn, he's working on a third hat trick!
1/10/01 Metadata-l listserver inititiated by the The GeoCommunity. (It is now (in 2004) the 'metadata' list)

2000

12/24/00 A Colorized version of the Content Standards for Digital Geospatial Metadata - Biological Data Profile, FGC-STD-001.1-1999 is now available. It and the original CSDGM version now have hierarchical level indication () to help follow lengthy compound elements.
11/21/00 RTSe USAannounces the release of Version 3.2 of SMMS (Spatial Metadata Management System) and SMMS for GeoMedia. New features include the ability to import CSDGM metadata in XML format, improved speed for the capture of dataset bounding coordinates, and support for additional data types that may be 'associated' with a metadata record to facilitate the automated population of select metadata elements.
10/28/00 err2html is a utility to reformat mp's error report into an HTML table that categorizes errors by type and severity. It has finally been added to this list of tools and reviewed.
10/22/00 Summaries for Isite and GeoConnect added. tkme 2.8.0 reviewed.
10/18/00 NJMetalite found at New Jersey Spatial Data Clearinghouse. This is a forms-based metadata entry tool made available by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and that is specifically enhanced to facilitate creation of metadata for New Jersey GIS data.
9/6/00 tkme starts to act like a metadata database with the addition of 'snippets.' These are metadata fragments that can be extracted from existing metadata documents, saved, and inserted into new metadata documents via a 'Snippets' menu.
8/29/00 mp, cns, xtme, and tkme go international! With the assistance of the National Geospatial Data Clearinghouse of Uruguay and the Natural Resources Survey Center of Bakosurtanal, Indonesia, Peter Schweitzer has updated his suite of metadata tools to support Spanish and Indonesian. The support is currently limited to element names, but will be expanded to menu items, tip text, and error messages in the future.
4/26/00 The FGDC announces the availability of the CSDGM Metadata Workbook, Version 2.0, in electronic form. This will be a replacement for the venerable 'Green Book.'
3/25/00 MQ, 'A Tcl interface to query formal metadata,' found at Peter Schweitzer's treasure trove of metadata tools. MQ can do more than query, however. MQ gives you some standard procedures that can be called from Tcl scripts to do automated processing (including element value update) on your collection of standalone metadata documents.
3/11/00 MetaViewer 1.2, a metadata cataloging tool / database tool that extracts Citation type information from ASCII FGDC compliant metadata for metadata presentation, sorting, searching, and catalog distribution is available from Edelstein Technology Group.
3/1/00 SMMS 3.1, a CSDGM 1998 compliant metadata entry/search tool released by RTSe USA. SMMS was formerly distributed and supported by Enabling Technology.
2/11/00 Margo Berendsen and Jeff Hamerlinck, Spatial Data and Visualization Center, University of Wyoming announce their final report from their UCGIS/FGDC project, Medata Education Strategies.
1/27/00 Intélec Géomatique reports their free Geoscope metadata tool is in use by 20 Canadian agencies and is headed for an ambitious revamping in collaboration with with a dozen ministries in Canada and abroad.

1999

11/23/99 The 'Colorized' CSDGM that encodes the production rules of the CSDGM through font and color is updated to the 1998 version of the CSDGM.
8/16/99 Enabling Technologies announces the availability of Spatial Metadata Management System (SMMS) version 3.0.
8/12/99 3001, Inc. releases Theme Metadata Extension for ArcView - displays HTML metadata for an active theme if available.
6/28/99 The Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center (Biological Resources Division, U.S. Geological Survey) announces Version 2.3 of Metamaker.
6/7/99 NOAA Coastal Services Center announces Version 2.0 of the ArcView Metadata Collector. Here is the announcement.
5/27/99 AXON Systems, Inc. announces 'Data Tracker™ GIS' which promises GIS data discovery, automated extraction of metadata from data sets (Arc/Info, ArcView, MapInfo, Microstation) into FGDC metadata, and data set tracking. An evaluation version is available.
3/4/99 Enabling Technologies, Inc. releases a free HTML/text metadata display extension for ArcView

1998

12/2/98 Modernizing Your Metadata to the 1998 Standard, AKA: Dinner and a Metadata
10/24/98 Peter Schweitzer has put together some helpful advice for metadata creators still using document.aml...