CEO Metadata User Guide
The Centre for Earth Observation (CEO), a joint initiative of the Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the Community's Environment and Climate RTD programme, has produced the "CEO Metadata User Guide" presenting the CEO recommendations on metadata. Metadata are data about the content, quality, condition and other characteristics of data. There are also many other definitions for metadata - namely 'data about data', or more broadly 'information about information'. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, information systems used different methods to describe their resources, sometimes using different terms for the same concept, sometimes the same term for different concepts. In order to respond to a growing user requirement for ease in locating data which meet specific criteria, ease in determining the quality and value of these data and ease in accessing these data across different information systems, a number of metadata standards have evolved. These standards define terms that either use free text or keywords from well-defined lists called 'valids'. The proliferation of parallel developments of 'metadata standards' and 'valids' led to the need for guidelines for usage by small and medium size information holders. The CEO Metadata User Guide is a simple, easy-to-read document, produced by CEO in response to this need. The CEO recommendations are fully aligned with the major European standard CEN TC287, other international initiatives with a major European interest (CIP and GELOS), and with major US standards (GILS, GEO). The guide is primarily aimed at Earth Observation users, but is also designed to cover non-space data.