[Thesaurus Links]

Library of Congress Online Authorities Look up
Select "Name Authority Headings" for the search.

Dublin Core Language Abbreviations

CIESIN Indexing Terms-Keywords

[Geographic Names Lookup Links]

Geographic Names Information System(GNIS) Lookup

Geographic Names Search (GNS) including 2-digit Country code Abbreviations

Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

State and Province Codes
Canadian Subnational Postal Abbreviations
Mexico State Abbreviation Codes
USA State Abbreviation Codes

Continent ISO 2-letter code, for example Europe(eu)

[FGDC metadata standards documents]

Federal Geographic Data Committee. FGDC-STD-001-1998. Content standard for digital geospatial metadata (revised June 1998). Federal Geographic Data Committee. Washington, D.C. http://www.fgdc.gov/standards/projects/FGDC-standards-projects/metadata/base-metadata/v2_0698.pdf -The Standard

Federal Geographic Data Committee. Content standard for digital geospatial metadata workbook version 2.0. Federal Geographic Data Committee. Washington, D.C. http://www.fgdc.gov/metadata/documents/workbook_0501_bmk.pdf
Official FGDC user-friendly interpretation of the Standard including FAQs and examples

Federal Geographic Data Committee. Metadata quick guide. (March 2005) Federal Geographic Data Committee. Washington, D.C. http://www.fgdc.gov/metadata/documents/MetadataQuickGuide.pdf
A useful reference sheet with short explanations of elements and examples. Includes a list of ISO topic categories.

Federal Geographic Data Committee. National Metadata Cadre. Ten most common metadata errors. (2000). Federal Geographic Data Committee. Washington, D.C. http://www.fgdc.gov/metadata/documents/top10metadataerrors.pdf

Harvard University. Harvard Geospatial Library. HGL metadata examples (May 2006). HGL metadata examples

Wyoming Geographic Information Science Center. Metadata Education Project. Good and bad examples of metadata. http://www.sdvc.uwyo.edu/metadata/good.html

Use the USGS Validation Tool to check the metadata http://geo-nsdi.er.usgs.gov/validation/

Frequently Asked Questions http://geology.usgs.gov/tools/metadata/tools/doc/faq.html

Metadata primer http://www.lic.wisc.edu/metadata/METAPRIM.HTM

Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metdata http://www.fgdc.gov/standards/projects/FGDC-standards-projects/metadata/base-metadata/index_html

FGDC Workbook with examples http://www.fgdc.gov/metadata/documents/workbook_0501_bmk.pdf

[Repositories with FGDC metadata examples]

Harvard Geospatial Library - http://hgl.harvard.edu
Columbia University - http://gis.columbia.edu/data.html
MIT GeoWeb - http://web.mit.edu/geoweb/
Cornell CUGIR - http://cugir.mannlib.cornell.edu/