EML Best Practices for LTER Site Metadata EML Best Practices Committee (Corinna Gries, Margaret O’Brien, Ken Ramsey, Wade Sheldon)

Rationale Considerable documentation for EML exists  EML Handbook:  EML FAQ:  EML documentation: Many IMs confused about best way to populate EML  Complex, modular schema with many optional elements  Documentation rich, but hard to approach  Multiple places to include many types of content Concern: could lead to “ala carte” site-specific implementations

Rationale for a Best Practices Guide Provide guidance to sites in their initial implementation of EML, and a roadmap for improving their implementation to achieve higher functionality

Rationale for a Best Practices Guide Provide guidance to sites in their initial implementation of EML, and a roadmap for improving their implementation to achieve higher functionality Identify useful subsets of the EML schema to support specific functionality tiers targeted by the LTER NIS Advisory Committee (NISAC)

Rationale for a Best Practices Guide Provide guidance to sites in their initial implementation of EML, and a roadmap for improving their implementation to achieve higher functionality Identify useful subsets of the EML schema to support specific functionality tiers targeted by the LTER NIS Advisory Committee (NISAC) Maximize interoperability of LTER EML documents to facilitate data synthesis

Rationale for a Best Practices Guide Provide guidance to sites in their initial implementation of EML, and a roadmap for improving their implementation to achieve higher functionality Identify useful subsets of the EML schema to support specific functionality tiers targeted by the LTER NIS Advisory Committee (NISAC) Maximize interoperability of LTER EML documents to facilitate data synthesis Minimize heterogeneity of LTER EML documents to simplify development and re-use of software tools and style sheets

Process Working group met at LNO in May 2004 Discussed conclusions from 2003 SEV Workshop Compared EML documents currently being produced by sites Examined revised NISAC functionality matrix Revised content recommendations for metadata “completeness” levels (aka tiers) Outlined specific content recommendations for each level Developed a demo metadata document for “dissection” in examples (FLS) Began work on compiling a best practices “whitepaper”

Products EML Best Practices whitepaper (in edit)  specific content recommendations by level  xml code fragments to illustrate each level  strategies for problematic elements  specific guidance about content that can be included at multiple levels (e.g. distribution, methods) Sample Documents illustrating each Level Real-world EML documents complying with most or all level 4-5 recommendations

Document Structure

Directions Distribute the products on the IM Committee web page Maintain mailing list for feedback Make EML schema recommendations to eml- dev...