Thursday, April 27, 2006

8:30 am - 9:30 am

Level: Business

Visited a National Park or Forest lately? Did you see their biological and spatial metadata records? Like private industry, public natural resource agencies face significant obstacles to implementing metadata development programs. Enlisting champions, educating managers, learning cumbersome authoring tools, finding necessary resources, and more. This session reports on a 2005 study commissioned by the Federal Geographic Data Committee of the US Geological Survey that identifies obstacles to metadata development and strategies for overcoming those obstacles. In all, 26 obstacles were identified spanning issues of organization, education, processes, tools and standards. Sixteen strategies are offered for private industry and public organizations looking to break the metadata reluctance barrier. Three case studies of successful metadata development will be presented. Each organization maintains different levels of expertise and resources, from a single-person program to a $3.3 million dollar data management operation. Common strategies across the case studies will be outlined.

Eric Landis has been consulting on information management issues for natural resource agencies since 1989. He has assisted the National Park Service, US Forest Service, European Union, Federal Geographic Data Committee and National Biological Information Infrastructure improve their information archiving and delivery programs. Eric’s areas of specialty include developing metadata schemas and controlled vocabularies, conducting user needs assessments and advising on organizational design for implementing information management programs.

Sharon Shin serves as Metadata Coordinator for the Federal Geographic Data Committee Secretariat. Sharon provides guidance for intra-agency metadata coordination for federal, state, local, and tribal governments and academia. She oversees metadata training implementation and leads and supports train-the-metadata-trainer workshops. Additionally Sharon provides leadership for the National Spatial Data Infrastructure's Cooperative Agreements Program's metadata focused projects. Sharon is the co-lead of the U.S. ISO 19139 delagation leading the development of the U.S. National Metadata Profile (ISO 19139- Technical Specification).