Section 1 -- Metadata: What is it and Why is it Important? Section 2 -- Get Acquainted with the Content Standards for Digital Geospatial Metadata (CSDGM) Section 3 -- Where Does One Begin? Section 4 -- Select the Proper Metadata Tool Section 5 -- Start Out Simple Section 6 -- Other Metadata Issues

This primer started with a discussion of the importance of metadata. This was followed by a review of the Content Standards for Digital Geospatial Metadata. Now is the time to roll up our collective sleeves and tackle the task. This section outlines a strategy for collecting metadata at the agency or corporate level. The first step often involves getting an organizational committment to "do metadata."

This page leads to summaries of most of the known metadata tools used for documenting geospatial data and serving geospatial metadata. It includes tools for entering and editing metadata and utilities for preprocessing, extracting, postprocessing, validating, and viewing metadata. Most of these tools were designed to help complete Content Standards for Digital Geospatial Metadata (CSDGM) metadata, but several have been tuned to produce specific local metadata profiles.

Linden, Julie. "FGDC, Meet the DDI: Adding Geospatial Metadata to a Numeric Data Catalog." Presented at the annual meeting of the International Association of Social Science Information Services & Technology, Ottawa, Canada, May 2003. (PPT 224K)

The following crosswalk was done by Elizabeth Mangan, Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress.