This field is required, but it is not displayed in the interface. It may be identical to the layer_slug_s field, or it may be related to or derived from the layer_id_s. This value is ideally a persistent identifier or permalink (such as a [PURL (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_uniform_resource_locator) or Handle).
Signals access in the geoportal and is indicated by a padlock icon. Users need to sign in to download restricted items
Entry Guidelines
Choose either Public or Restricted
Controlled Vocabulary
"Public" or "Restricted"
Element Set
Dublin Core Metadata Element Set
Example
"Public"
Commentary
This field can be set to "Public", which allows users to view and download an item, or "Restricted", which requires a user to log in to an authentication service. If there are additional licenses or rights associated with a resource, administrators will have to create a custom field in the local Solr schema.
Titles should include place names and dates when available.
Controlled Vocabulary
no
Element Set
Dublin Core Metadata Element Set
Example
"Roads: Minneapolis, Minnesota, 2010"
Commentary
The title is the most prominent metadata field that users see when browsing or scanning search results. Since many datasets are created with ambiguous or non-unique titles, it may be worth the effort to improve or enhance them. The ideal sequence of a title is something akin to Topic of Layer: Place, Year. Putting the year at the end of a title produces better search results, since titles are left-anchored.
The name of the institution that holds the resource or acts as the custodian for the metadata record
Entry Guidelines
The value for this field should be one of the agreed upon shortened names for each institution. This will embed the correct icon into the search results and item pages.
This field indicates the institution that contributed the resource. The current community of practice is for this field to hold the name of the university or institution that has created the GeoBlacklight metadata record and/or hosts the dataset. Projects are encouraged to submit their institutional icon to the GeoBlacklight Icons repository to display with the resource.
This is a string appended to the base URL of a GeoBlacklight installation to create a unique landing page for each resource. It is visible to the user and serves the purpose of forming a persistent URL for each catalog item.
Entry Guidelines
This string must be a globally unique value. The value should be alpha-numeric characters separated by dashes.
Controlled Vocabulary
no
Element Set
GeoBlacklight
Example
"stanford-andhra-pradesh-village-boundaries"
Commentary
The slug makes up the URL for the resource in GeoBlacklight. If having a readable slug is desired, it is common to use the form, institution-keyword1-keyword2 (words or characters are separated by hyphens).
The rectangular extents of the resource. Note that this field is indexed as a Solr spatial (RPT) field
Entry Guidelines
Bounding box of the layer as a ENVELOPE WKT (from the CQL standard) using coordinates in (West, East, North, South) order. The pattern is: ENVELOPE(.,.,.,.)
Controlled Vocabulary
no
Element Set
GeoBlacklight
Example
"ENVELOPE(76.76, 84.76, 19.91, 12.62)"
Commentary
The rectangular bounding box is to aid searching with the map interface. Although accuracy is encouraged, it may not always be necessary to to have precise bounding coordinates. The field functions to facilitate discovery more than to indicate exact extents.
A four digit integer representing a year of temporal coverage or date issued for the resource. This field is used to populate the Year facet and the optional Blacklight Range Limit gem
Entry Guidelines
This field must be an integer.
Controlled Vocabulary
no
Element Set
GeoBlacklight
Example
"1982"
Commentary
This field is a four digit integer that must be inferred by the temporal coverage or date issued of the resource. If a single record spans multiple years, choose the earliest year for the solr_year_i field.
The dc_creator_sm field is best reserved for instances in which an individual person has collected, produced, or generated analyses of data (as opposed to an agency releasing a data product or resource). See also the comments on dc_publisher_sm.
At minimum, this is a reiteration of the title in sentence format. Other relevant information, such as data creation methods, data sources, and special licenses, may also be included.
Entry Guidelines
This is a plain text field.
Controlled Vocabulary
no
Element Set
Dublin Core Metadata Element Set
Example
"This polygon shapefile represents boundaries of election districts in New York City. It was harvested from the NYC Open Data Portal."
Commentary
The dc_description_s field is the second most prominent value that users see when search or browsing for items. Although not required, it is strongly recommended. If the description is minimal or lacking, it can be improved by concatenating available metadata fields, such as title, date, format, and place. This is a plain text field, so html code is not supported here unless the application is customized. It is recommended to assume that discovery happens in multiple contexts (i.e., GeoBlacklight metadata may be integrated into other discovery environments), so descriptions should use complete sentences that signpost what the data object is, even though that is evident within GeoBlacklight itself.
yes, if download link is included AND if download URL is configured as a single key:value pair
Type
string
Description
This indicates the file format of the data. If a download link is included, this value displays on the item page in the button under the download widget
The most important thing to remember about the dc_format_s field is that it is required for Download functionality if using a single value string for downloads. (pre-GeoBlacklight version 3.0). See Multiple Downloads for details.
Spell out language (in English) instead of using the ISO 639-1 code (e.g.,“French” instead of “fra”).
Controlled Vocabulary
no
Element Set
Dublin Core Metadata Element Set
Example
"English"
Commentary
This field is intended to indicate the language of the dataset, map, and/or supporting documentation. The most common practice in this community is to spell the name language out in English (e.g., "French").
The distinction between dc_publisher_s and dc_creator_sm for data is often vague. Publishers should be the administrative body or organization that made the original resource available, regardless of who compiled or produced the data.
This is used to indicate parent/child relationships between data layers and activates the Data Relations widget in GeoBlacklight
Entry Guidelines
This is only added to the child records. Enter the layer_slug_s of the parent record(s) into this field.
Controlled Vocabulary
no
Element Set
Dublin Core Metadata Element Set
Example
"stanford-vr593vj7147"
Commentary
The dc_source_sm field exists to indicate parent-child relationships between records. Common uses include: individual sheets within a map series that can point to a Shapefile that serves as an index map, individual Shapefile layers that have been derived from a Geodatabase that can point to the record for the GeoDatabase, or collection-level and related individual layer records. See the GeoBlacklight data relations widget for more information.
These should be consistent and chosen from a controlled vocabulary. Use sentence style capitalization, where only the first word of a phrase is capitalized.
Controlled Vocabulary
Recommended thesauri are ISO Topic Categories and Library of Congress Subject Headings.
Element Set
Dublin Core Metadata Element Set
Example
"Census", "Human settlements"
Commentary
This field is indexed as a facet by default for GeoBlacklight applications, and it can become unwieldy when aggregating metadata records from multiple sources. Controlled vocabularies for GIS data have typically been expressed as ISO Topic Categories and localized thesauri, while scanned maps are typically described with Library of Congress Subject Headings. Even within these vocabularies, localized spellings and abbreviations will result in considerable variations between institutions. Institutions are encouraged to observe what terms are commonly in use and, at the very least, strive for internal consistency with controlled vocabularies and spellings. This facilitates easier metadata sharing across projects, such as the repositories in OpenGeoMetadata. Some institutions choose to create custom keyword fields to hold local, unnormalized values. It is recommended not to use Library of Congress Subject Headings to indicate the geography or spatial coverage of a dataset; instead, use the dct_spatial_sm field for this.
The dc_type_s field is optional, but it can be useful for categorizing between datasets, scanned maps, and collections. The GeoBlacklight 1.0 schema observes the Dublin Core controlled vocabulary for Type
The dct_isPartOf_sm field is most often used as a way to group collections arbitrarily. Such groupings often have meaning within local institutions and can be shorthand for keeping like items together. For example, the value could mark all of the items in a single data submission, all of the items that pertain to a class that is working with GIS data, or all of the items harvested from a specific Open Data portal.
Although the dct_issued_s field is optional, it is often useful when a clear Temporal Coverage value is not present. For example, one may want to preserve a dataset with an uncertain lineage, but there is an indicator on a data portal on the date of last update.
This element is a hash of key/value pairs for different types of external links. It integrates external services and references using the CatInterOp approach
All of the external links for the resource are added to the dct_references_s field as a serialized JSON array of key/value pairs. The download key/value pair is unique, because the value can be an array. See Multiple Downloads for details.
Place name text strings should be specified out to the nation level. It is typical for the place name to represent the largest extent the data layer represents.
It is recommended to have at least one place name for each layer that corresponds to the logical extent of the area of that layer. Adding additional place names that fall within the layer should be done only if they are topically relevant to the content of the data. If a long list of place names is desired in the metadata for search purposes, a customized hidden field is recommended.
This represents the "Ground Condition" of the resource, meaning the time period data was collected or is intended to represent. Displays on the item page in the Year value
Entry Guidelines
This is a text string and can indicate uncertainty
Controlled Vocabulary
no
Element Set
DCMI Metadata Terms
Example
"2007-2009"
Commentary
The dct_temporal_sm field is multi-valued, so multiple strings can be used to indicate the time period the resource depicts, when the data was collected, and/or when the resources was created. Examples include: “1910?”, “1800-1805”, “before 2000”. If a single dataset spans multiple years, one can add each intervening year as a discrete value (e.g., 2007,2008,2009,2010). However, a common convention is to include only the first and last year (e.g., 2007,2010 for a dataset encompassing the span of time between 2007 and 2010).
This field helps to differentiate between vector (Point, Line, Polygon), raster (Raster, Image), nonspatial formats (table), or a combination (Mixed). If processing metadata from a geospatial web server, this value may be programmatically determined. However, in many cases, it must be manually determined. The field is tied to icons for the resource, and provides the user with visual clues to the item. However, if the element is troublesome or unnecessary for a particular institution, it can be omitted.
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