LTER Information Management

This is some documentation on how to use the ESRI to EML crosswalk.

You may find useful some of the tips offered here on how to use the 'esri2eml_for_LTER.xslt' crosswalk. This XSLT stylesheet will allow you to create a EML record out of an XML-record expressed in ESRI - that is, when you use any of the ARC family products (ARC-GIS, ARC-Catalog, ARC-Server, ARCMap etc) you are generating metadata in XML format. This metadata follows the ESRI schema, some version of it, which is based on the Federal Geographic Data Committee schema.

Outline of the documentation:

• Install
1. Pre-requisites: An XSLT interpreter: Xalan + Xerces
2. Download the latest version from the LNO CVS, or from the ESRI 2 EML project page or this link
• Dealing with shortcomings of the Esri2Eml crosswalk
1. Granularity: The crosswalk will store the information that encompasses First Name and Last Name (sometimes multiple authors depends on the orginal document) in one field (XML tag). The crosswalk will throw this information into a creator (or corresponding party) "last name" (aka surName). You can present this information better by editing the resulting EML -- look for , cut & paste, save.
2. Edit the packageId in the Stylesheet -- you can at least customize the "scope" of the packageID (like knb-lter-sev). You will also have to edit the exact numeric packageId identifier and revision for each resulting EML (knb-lter-sev.32374.1492).
3. Many Esri records at once - You can script some of this, ask the IM community for help, scripts do exist.
4. Adapt the copyright or data usage policies. The style defaults to the LTER Network policies if the originary ESRI document does not specify anything. You may want to see that - look for
5. Check the validity of the document any way you can (XML editor, parser, metacat, etc)
6. Links to the data? check whether it is satisfying
7. It is a Beta tool, chances are it will not always work, and certainly the results will not improve the quality of the original document, furthermore, it is possible that some metadata could be enhanced, this is a helper tool, not an automated process to fix it all.
• ARC-Catalog related tip: You can embed the transformation in Arc-Catalog. In addition to the stylesheet Esri2Eml, you are going to need this additional XML file to embedded in the ArcCatalog
• Support forums, bugs, etc. See this blog about the ESRI10 release and look for related article in databits