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Supporting Documents

This page lists a series of documents being developed to assist contributors in providing data and metadata.

Policy Document: Limiting Access to Sensitive Data in CoRIS

This policy document outlines the process, criteria, and types of access from the Coral Reef Information System (CoRIS) for specific types of coral research data that require limited access, as defined by the Coral Reef Conservation Program. View the policy document here (pdf, 108kb).


Technical Guidelines for Metadata Preparation

Technical Guidelines for Metadata Preparation, Version 4.3. November 2009 (pdf, 148kb)

This document provides an overview of the CoRIS project and the importance of metadata to CoRIS. It outlines CoRIS required metadata elements, presents guidelines and instructions for completing metadata fields, provides sample metadata, and contains ASCII metadata templates for CoRIS as well as for the full FGDC (Federal Geographic Data Committee) standard. It also provides links to Web sites with metadata standards and tools for working with metadata.


Keywords Used in Metadata

These documents contain lists of keywords used in metadata to help describe coral reef data sets. The lists are useful in creating metadata and in searching for coral reef data and information.

Theme Keywords

Discovery Keywords

Place Keywords


Biological Data - Taxonomy

Many data sets, and their metadata, include lists of species about which data are available. The files include scientific names with their corresponding higher taxa. The format is typically: Genus species - Family - Order - Class - Phylum - Kingdom.

Taxon information is frequently identified from one of the following resources:


Metadata Examples

Several CoRIS metadata records are presented as examples for different data types.


FGDC Content Standards for Digital Geospatial Metadata - ASCII and XML Templates

The following two, blank metadata templates are based on basic FGDC Content Standards for Digital Geospatial Metadata and are provided as an aid to persons preparing metadata for CoRIS.  Please note that the templates include only those metadata fields that NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP) requires be completed by persons submitting metadata to CoRIS.  The blank metadata templates are presented in both .txt and .xml formats; however, CoRIS requests that metadata be provided in a .xml format to the project. 

Blank ASCII Metadata Record - Minimum CRCP Fields

Blank XML Metadata Record - Minimum CRCP Fields


Metadata Crosswalk

The relationship between the FGDC, MARC21, and Dublin Core metadata standards are presented in the Metadata Crosswalk (pdf, 756 kb).


CoRIS Development

The following documents provide additional background context of the early stages of CoRIS development: