HydroShare provides a standard set of metadata elements for describing the resources that you create. These elements follow the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative’s standard metadata terms, including title, abstract, subject keywords, spatial and temporal coverage, etc. For best practices on what to include in your metadata, check out: Following Metadata Best Practices. When you create a new resource, you will be taken to the landing page for that resource, where you can edit the metadata. You can also edit the metadata elements of your resource at any point after its creation by clicking on the “Edit Resource” button on the landing page.
Editing Standard Metadata Elements
Once in edit mode, many of the metadata elements can be edited directly on the page. For example, click in the Abstract field, add descriptive text, and remember to Save Changes. Subject keywords can be added by typing keywords in the text box and clicking the “Add” button.
Spatial and Temporal Coverage
The spatial and temporal coverage metadata can be set in multiple ways. You can type in coordinates or dates into the text boxes. For spatial coverage you can click a point or draw a box on the corresponding map. You can also click the buttons to set the spatial and/or temporal coverage from the content files in your resource. When you click these buttons, HydroShare will query the metadata for your content files and will return a point or bounding box and date range that contain all of the data you have added to your resource.
Additional Metadata
You can describe your resource using additional metadata elements beyond those Dublin Core elements provided directly on the page. If you click the plus button to add an additional metadata element, you can name that element whatever you want. For example, in the figure below, a new metadata element called “Measured Variables” will be created with a value of “Water temperature.” You can use the Additional Metadata section to create whatever metadata elements you need to describe your data.
README Functionality
Sometimes, you may wish to add a detailed description of the contents of your resource, and it is inconvenient to type all of this text into the Abstract element or to include it as “Additional Metadata” elements. In this case, you can upload a detailed README file to your resource. The content of the README file is up to you, but generally, README files are useful to encode detailed text that describes the nature and content of your resource. This may include a detailed description of a study site, methods, observed or simulated variables, the structure and content of the folders within a resource and the data files themselves, etc.
If you upload a README file to the root folder (i.e., the top level folder of your resource), HydroShare will display the content of your README file on the landing page for your resource just below the file content area. README files must be text files with a “.txt” or “.md” file extension to be displayed on the page. If you use a “.md” file extension for your README file, you can use Markdown formatting in your README file and HydroShare will render your rich formatted text on the landing page. For a simple reference on how to use Markdown formatting see https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax.
