Our goal is to drive the design of the GBIF metadata catalogue system – or so-called ‘Metadata Portal‘ – based on best practice and advise the Informatics technical team on its integration within the broader GBIF Portal. For such a system to become useful, Participants must adopt it and provide content.

The following activities are used to develop the metadata catalogue system:

Activity 1: Develop a GBIF metadata profile for describing biodiversity information resources

The ECAT and DIGIT teams will mobilise a set of metadata descriptors that adequately describe the biodiversity information resources. IDA will coordinate the review and development of a metadata standard for GBIF-mediated biodiversity resources by surveying GBIF partners, reviewing related standards and working with dedicated task groups to meet Participant needs for resource discovery, including descriptions of data standards, protocols and web services. Issues around multilingual aspects of metadata will also be investigated.

Activity 2: Develop a metadata management tool

Participant Nodes and other data publishers need a tool that is easy to install and use and that will allow them to manage (e.g. edit, store, revise and publish) metadata. This tool is being developed by the GBIF Informatics Team as an integral part of the Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT) and will be cross-linked with the Biodiversity Collections Index (BCI). IDA will coordinate testing to ensure that end user requirements are met by adopting an iterative process of development in which early prototypes are made available to Participant Nodes for evaluation and feedback, and will liaise with Training to develop a module on installing and using the tool.

Activity 3: Facilitate the inclusion of semantically rich content in metadata

The inclusion of semantically rich content derived from controlled vocabularies, thesauri and ontologies ensures that the metadata carry meaning, structured searching is enhanced, and the metadata and data are amenable to machine processing. IDA will undertake a review of controlled terminology and give recommendations for developing and integrating search tools for controlled terminology in the metadata management system.

Activity 4: Develop interoperability mechanisms with other biodiversity metadata networks

Many national and international organisations already maintain or plan to develop metadata systems. A mechanism to develop interoperability between the GBIF metadata cataloguing system and other metadata networks should ensure wide unified access to biodiversity resources. IDA will convene a Metadata Database Interoperability Task Group to advise on how existing metadata systems can be made interoperable to allow cross-database searching. A requirements document will be prepared for Informatics to inform development of architectural and implementation plans for interoperability. The interoperability mechanism will be implemented with selected major networks.