Go-Geo Help - Academic Geospatial Metadata Application Profile (AGMAP) Guidelines
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Go-Geo Help - Academic Geospatial Metadata Application Profile (AGMAP) Guidelines
Academic Geospatial Metadata Application Profile (AGMAP) Guidelines
The guidelines can be accessed by clicking here
The definitions of the 97 elements within the AGMAP guidelines can be accessed by clicking here
The Go-Geo! metadata guidelines have been produced to serve as a reference resource for individuals and organisations wishing to document and create quality metadata records for publication on the Go-Geo! portal. The guidelines provide an overview of geospatial metadata and introduce AGMAP, the Academic Geospatial Metadata Application Profile, which is a template designed to support the documentation and discovery of spatial datasets within UK Higher and Further Education. AGMAP also serves as a metadata element field template for the Go-Geo! portal and Go-Geo! Metadata Editor tool.
AGMAP includes 97 elements which provide information about the when, where, how and what of a dataset, its access and use conditions and the metadata record itself. Though the total number of elements in the AGMAP profile is considerable, only 36 of these elements are mandatory. Providing information for these 36 elements will satisfy the minimum requirements for creating an HE/FE (AGMAP) compliant metadata record. This makes the task of metadata creation less onerous, and considering that 15 of these 36 mandatory elements require only contact information, a metadata creator can produce a template file containing these contact details. Subsequently, this information can be transferred to each new metadata record, hence demanding even less time of the metadata creator. In addition, nine of the other mandatory elements include lists, so the metadata creator needs only to select the relevant values rather than entering free text. The inclusion of these elements in the Go-Geo! Metadata Editor tool, and use of the contact details template scheme, eases the process of metadata creation and demands only 15 minutes time to create a new, compliant metadata record.
The 200 page guidelines document has been written to serve as a reference resource for individuals and organisations wishing to document and create metadata records. Referencing the guidelines also ensures that the metadata creator can produce a compliant, accurate metadata record for publication on the Go-Geo! portal site or for management of local data.
The AGMAP guidelines provide an overview of geospatial metadata and the AGMAP profile. The guidelines also provide definitions, conditions and requirements for each of the 97 elements comprising the AGMAP profile. In addition, the guidelines include examples for each of the elements to provide greater clarity for the eclectic range of academics and researchers using geographic information technology. Many of the examples are presented in a manner that can be understood across social science and science disciplines including archaeology and anthropology, biological sciences, civil engineering, earth sciences, environmental sciences, geography, health sciences, history and sociology.
Each AGMAP element, and its details, is also stored separately in an online database which can be accessed directly from the Go-Geo! portal and Metadata Editor tool. As mentioned the AGMAP profile serves as the metadata template for both resources. Many users of the portal and tool will be unfamiliar with certain elements (e.g.: Dataset Event Date or Data Hierarchical Level) and wish to reference the guidelines to familiarise themselves with these elements. The mechanism in place allows the user to click the element in question in order to access the detailed information for that element, which is displayed through a new open window.
Metadata creators also have the option of downloading the complete Go-Geo! metadata guidelines document from the Go-Geo! portal website. The document is available in *.pdf format and can be downloaded for printing.
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