To improve the availability of metadata training, the Virginia Tech Conservation Management Institute (CMI) will partner with the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) to develop online metadata training tools. The CMI will work with Vivian Hutchison, the National Biological Information Infrastructure’s Metadata Program Coordinator, to convert their traditional instructor-led classroom course into an online Flash and .html course. Offering the course in this format will allow NBII to reach a larger audience and ultimately will aid in allowing data sets created for one project to be used by another through proper documentation. While there is not a substitute for instructor-led hands-on training, a web-based training tool will help reach the individuals that do not fit into the demographic that has historically taken the NBII metadata training courses.
Through a combined effort, the CMI and the NBII Metadata Program Coordinator will create an online metadata training course that will aid in the National Spatial Data Infrastructure’s goal of establishing a sustained resource of metadata creators. Traditionally, attendees of NBII metadata training courses have been largely agency data managers. These individuals typically are not intimately involved with the original creation of data, but are charged with the task of distributing it on behalf of their agency. Since metadata is a federally mandated requirement, data managers are also often asked to create a record to accompany the completed data set. An online training course would allow the NBII and NSDI to target primary metadata/data creators, and would generate a larger audience for metadata creation.
NBII Online Metadata Training Module
Virginia Tech Conservation Management Institute
Contact:
Andrew Rosenberger
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Conservation
Management Institute
540 231-3527
anrosenb@vt.edu
Other Contact:
Vivian Hutchison
National Biological Information Infrastructure, US Geological
Survey
206-526-6282 ext 329
vhutchison@usgs.gov