Accessing Metadata

There are two main ways to find and access metadata in InPort.

Browsing the Catalog

Each NMFS organization maintains its own collection of metadata, referred to within InPort as a Library. The metadata contained within a Library is hierarchically organized to facilitate discoverability and maintainability. Metadata records in InPort are called Catalog Items, and consist of the following types:

Library (LIB)
Project (PRJ)
Data Set (DS)
Entity (ENT)
Publication (PUB)
Document (DOC)
Procedure (PRC)

To browse the list of publicly available Libraries, go to the Organizations section. Note that some Libraries, and/or portions of Libraries, are available to only logged-in users.

If you are affiliated with NOAA or one of its participating partners, and would like to obtain an account to access internal metadata in InPort, please contact your organization's designated InPort Librarian for more details.

Librarians for each Organization in InPort are listed on the Organization Info page.

Searching the Catalog

A general search box is available on the InPort home page and in the header of every other page. This search will match words and phrases for the following Catalog Item fields:

Title
Short Name
Abstract
Supplemental Information
Controlled Keywords
Uncontrolled Keywords
Tags

An Advanced Search function is also available for adding additional query parameters, such as Catalog Item Type, Publication Status (logged-in users only), Organization, Time Frame, and Geographic Boundary.

Making Use of Catalog Item Metadata

Once you have found a record of interest, you can use the metadata provided to take further action. Some records have downloadable data available online listed in the Distribution Info and/or URLs section. Other items contain instructions on how to obtain the data as well as other pertinent information.

In addition, well-documented metadata records will specify a number of Support Roles, such as a Point of Contact, Distributor, Data Steward, and/or Metadata Contact. If no Support Role contacts are listed for a metadata record, you can try contacting the organization that the record belongs to.

Metadata Open Standards Support

All Data Sets in InPort can be exported into the following standard open metadata formats:

ISO 19115-2
Dublin Core (XML)

All Catalog Item types can be exported as Dublin Core (XML).

In addition, all Catalog Item types can be exported as InPort XML, which is an XML representation of that metadata records in InPort.