Metadata Standards

There are a number of existing metadata standards available for describing datasets. These include:

• Dublin Core - general library discovery metadata standard
  
• FGDC/DIF - standard for geophisical data
  
• ISO 19115 - standard for geophysical data (FGDC is merging/synchronizing with this ISO standard)
  
• ADN - Digital library standard with education specific fields.

Including Existing Metadata Records in THREDDS catalogs.

Any metadata records can be included directly in or referenced from a THREDDS metadata element.

Here is an example of how to include a Dublin Core record directly in a THREDDS metadata element:

<metadata xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
  <dc:title>NCEP GFS Model - Alaska 191km </dc:title>
  <dc:creator>NOAA/NCEP</dc:creator>
  ...
</metadata>

Here is an example of how to reference a metadata record (XLink attributes are used):

<metadata xlink:title="NCEP GFS Model - Alaska 191km"
          xlink:href="http://server/dc/ncep.gfs.alaska_191km.xml" />