EEOS 381 - Applications of Geographic Information Systems
Spring, 2008

- Lab 11 -

Objective:
Produce an FGDC-compliant metadata document using ArcCatalog.

Steps:
  1. Create a new personal geodatabase named <your_username>_lab11.mdb on your H: drive.
  2. Using ArcCatalog, Import into your PGDB the shapefile S:\ge381_s08\381_labs_submit\lab11\landuse_poly.shp. This will create a new PGDB feature class (call it “landuse_boston_metro”).
  3. Select the feature class and zoom in to a small area in the Preview tab and hit the 'Create Thumbnail' button. This will add a little picture of the data to your metadata page.
  4. Click the Metadata tab.
  5. Hit the 'Edit Metadata' button on the Metadata toolbar to open the FGDC-style metadata editor dialog.
  6. Using the layer's web page at http://www.mass.gov/mgis/lus.htm enter information for the following categories:
    1. Identification section:
      • Abstract (use text from Overview section on the land use web page; copy and paste if you want)
      • Purpose (“Planning and analysis”)
      • Access and Use Constraints (both “None – these data are public records”)
      • Contact tab - Click “Details…” and make yourself the point of contact, including an address.
      • Citation tab - Click “Details…” and enter an appropriate title for your dataset, like “Boston Metro Area Landuse” (don’t just leave the default layer name as the title), information for the Originator – “UMass-Amherst Resource Mapping Project” – and the Publication Date (use the date at the top of the Web page)
      • Time Period (use 1999 for both Currentness Reference and Calendar Date)
      • Status of the data (Progress “Complete”, Update Frequency “As Needed”)
      • Keywords – For Theme, enter at least five that seem relevant; For Thesaurus enter “None”; for Place enter at least two.
    2. Entity Attribute section:
      • Descriptions for all fields (Attribute tab > General tab – Definition text box; see web site Attributes section for details)
      • Descriptions of the 21 classes of land use (click the Attribute Domain Values tab when you see the LU21_1999 field in the General tab and enter the appropriate information in the ‘Value’ and ‘Value Definition’ text boxes)
    3. Distribution section - (General tab – make something up; Distributor tab - make yourself the contact by clicking “Details”, including an address)
    4. Metadata Reference section – enter yourself as the contact by clicking “Details” next to the “Contacts” text box; enter all REQUIRED information in both the General and Address tabs)
  7. Save as you go along, and when done. (Note: saving will also close the dialog, so you’ll need to re-open it)
  8. View the metadata with the different style sheets. In the FGDC FAQ style sheet, make sure none of the questions has the generic "REQUIRED" filler text. If you see this text, go back into the editor and complete that piece of information. This style sheet is especially useful for viewing the Entity Attribute information (click #7 in the first section to see this information).
  9. When all the metadata has been entered, zip your MDB file and save as <your_username>_lab11.zip. Copy the zip file into the T:\EEOS381\381_labs_submit\lab11 folder.

Due on Wednesday, April 30, 2008