National Park Service metadata collection guidelines

Posting Digital Geospatial Data to the NPS GIS Data Clearinghouse

Metadata Section 6 - Distribution Information

Data to be posted on the NPS Clearinghouse should have this section in the metadata entered according to the NPS Standard.

• Standard NPS entries for Vector data
• Standard NPS entries for Raster data

Mandatory Metadata Quality Check ("QC")

The GIS Program Office is offering assistance performing a quality control (QC) check of metadata files. We have found it extremely beneficial to have another party (independent of the collection process) review the metadata document for formatting and information placement early on in metadata development. This is particularly useful if the file will be used as a template for many other files. Please send one or two of your draft metadata records at a time for QC in .html format to Theresa Ely or your quality control repesentative before creating a bulk of records. This ensures a timely response and you can avoid being overwhelmed with small changes to dozens of files.

Once your park is thoroughly familiar with metadata creation, you can QC you own documents before sending them to us for posting.

Posting Data and Metadata to the NPS Clearinghouse

Completed metadata, data, and optional GIF/JPEG images should be sent to the support office, not directly to Bill Slocumb at NCSU.

For consolidation of clearinghouse administration, we are now asking that all Intermountain metadata and data be routed through the support office before going to the NPS clearinghouse node. We will need your final/revised metadata files (in .txt, .sgml, and .html format) and their corresponding data and graphics (.jpg) to be forwarded to Paul Voris. The support office will then send a large bulk of files to the Clearinghouse on CD and to TIC when needed.

The optional thumbnail images, such as JPEG files, should not exceed 100 KB in size. Help on how to create JPEG images in ArcView.