GoGeo is an online metadata creation and discovery portal. We list a variety of resources on GoGeo, and we also allow users to discover what datasets exist within UK academia and beyond.
the core function of GoGeo is to actually discover datasets, and we search metadata collections from a variety of places – our own academic metadata holdings, but also metadata catalogues that exist, for example, within the research centres, the natural environment research centres, and also in the past we’ve cross-searched some government metadata holdings, and as the new UK location programme comes onboard we will be cross-searching the new government metadata holdings as well.
There’s general recognition that students and researchers maybe only search for data once or twice a year when they’re perhaps carrying out a large project, dissertation or thesis; so we’ve tried to provide other resources around GoGeo, so we have a large web-resource section where we list conferences, events, news items, things that we think would be of general interest to people working with geospatial data .
we have an area on the portal where we provide resources and guidance for people working with metadata, so we provide metadata mappings where we look at how geospatial metadata can be mapped and be interoperable with other metadata standards – for example, Dublin Core and DDI – those are metadata standards that are used in other metadata catalogues. We also have a metadata newsletter, and we have information about workshops that we run for people who’d like to learn about metadata.
Over the last couple of years we’ve realised that people don’t always come to GoGeo to find out the news items and other web resource information we have, so we’ve set up a different variety of means to make sure the information that we’re providing on GoGeo can be picked up in other vehicles. So we’ve set up RSS feeds on our news items, we also have a GoGeo blog, and we have a GoGeo Twitter account.
The GoGeo blog itself will pick up particular things that we’ve mentioned on the GoGeo site and explore them a little more. So, for example, if there’s a new free piece of software, we might evaluate that software within EDINA, and then put a bit of a write-up about it on the GoGeo blog.
So those are some of the core area of GoGeo, but we also, from the homepage of GoGeo, you can access two of our sister services. The first one is called GeoDoc, and that’s where we allow people to come online and create a metadata record compliant to an international metadata standard. it has a validator, so as the user’s creating the metadata record it tells them whether the record is complete, or whether they’ve missed some elements or not. For every single element that they’re completing, we provide online help to explain what sort of information they should be providing according to that particular element.
Once a user has finished creating a metadata record we allow them to export out to a variety of different metadata formats, again trying to make it as interoperable as possible, so again they can export out to Gemini, which is the UK government metadata standard, Inspire which is the new European metadata standard, but also things like Dublin Core and DDI.
The other option when someone uses GeoDoc is that they can opt to publicly publish their metadata; so if they’ve documented a dataset and they’d like anyone to be able to discover the existence of that dataset they can publish it on the GoGeo catalogue.
ShareGeo Open is our geospatial data repository. There’s a real driver for people to share and deposit research data that they’ve created and make it available for others to use, so ShareGeo Open has been developed with geospatial data in mind.
on the homepage of GoGeo, you’re able to see the latest datasets that have been deposited into ShareGeo Open. And also when you carry out a metadata search on GoGeo, the metadata records are harvested from ShareGeo Open so your metadata search will discover those datasets in the ShareGeo repository as well.
GeoDoc enables you to create standards compliant metadata, and that’s becoming more important as the research data initiatives are moving along, and we have other directives coming out of the EC.
Inspire is about creating an infrastructure for spatial information in Europe. It’s really about allowing interoperability amongst member states of the European Community to share and use the geospatial data. It’s about harmonising different geospatial datasets.
The Inspire Directive has come out of the European Community, but each member state has created their own Inspire regulations. So in England, Wales and Scotland, the Information Commissioner has made particular regulations that pick up the Inspire Directive.
How does that impact upon academia? Well initially, obviously, there will be far more datasets that are documented and made available for others to use – that’s of benefit to researchers when they’re searching for data. However, we also have to think that universities themselves, as public authorities, will have a requirement or an obligation to document and describe their geospatial datasets, so in doing so, people are going to have to use GeoDoc to describe their datasets to a compliant metadata standard, and then use GoGeo to publish the metadata so that universities are meeting their obligations under Inspire.