This document lists metadata for the hydrogeology products produced by the Great Artesian Basin Water Resource Assessment.

This report contains a data dictionary for the hydrogeology products released by the Great Artesian Basin Water Resource Assessment

We have completed a new Web interface that makes it easier for AGSO's clients to find and order products sold by the AGSO Sales Centre. The new system is on AGSO's Web site at http://www.agso.gov.au/databases/catalog /html. Alternatively, from AGSO's home page at http://www.agso.gov.au, click on the `Products' button and select `AGSO Products' from the pull-down menu of online databases. The new interface is similar to the `Products Database' it replaces, but is based on the `AGSO Catalog', a new metadata system designed to keep track of all of AGSO outputs - including products, publications, datasets and resources. The new interface will be followed shortly by a Web interface for finding publications, papers and articles by AGSO staff members.

The Australian National Marine Data Group was formed by the Heads of Marine Agencies (HOMA) to promote improved interchange of marine data in Australia. The ANMDG held a workshop of practitioners in May 2002 with the intention of identifying major areas of interest and tasks for working groups to address in order to make progress with development of marine data interchange in Australia. This Proceedings CD contains the presentations by speakers in the form of PowerPoint slides and a few Acrobat documents. It was distributed to participants in the workshop.

With the increasing emphasis on electronic rather that paper products, the need for adequate metadata is becoming more and more pressing. The new AGSO Catalog is designed to address this problem at the corporate level. Developed from the AGSO Products Database, the AGSO Catalog is designed to encompass most of AGSOs outputs, datasets and resources. It does this with the help of various intranet and Web interfaces. Projects or authors must initiate Catalog entries, for without an acceptable metadata a product cannot be sold by the Sales Centre, or permission to publish will not be granted. The Catalog is the key to future systems of information distribution and sales. It will permit us to go directly from the metadata to the electronically stored objects, thus enabling automated information distribution and electronic commerce.

OZCHEM is AGSO's national whole-rock geochemical database (previously known as ROCKCHEM). This documentation explains the database structure and includes definitions of the database tables and columns (attributes). It is provided with all purchases of OZCHEM data, but can also be purchased separately. The documentation includes summaries and highlights of all the regional data sets that comprise OZCHEM.

The fruits of geoscientists' labours are consigned increasingy to computer files. Although the capacities of electronic media are expanding rapidly, the means of keeping track of all these files is lagging. Knowledge-based organisations like AGSO need the electronic equivalent of libraries to house this information, the analogue of library catalogues to allow us to find critical bits, and the equivalent of librarians to manage the metadata. Files worth keeping must be kept permanently online, referenced by a metadatabase, visible on the Web, accessible from around the world, and in compliance with changing hardware, software and data standards.

This report provides detailed metadata for the 37 marine physical environmental variables that were collated or specifically generated by the Marine Biodiversity Hub, which is part of the Commonwealth Environment Research Facilities Program. The work was done at Geoscience Australia and the Marine and Atmospheric Division of CSIRO. The data are required for use in the Hub's surrogacy and predictive modelling research. Bathymetry, geomorphology, seabed sediment and seabed exposure data were produced by Geoscience Australia. Bottom-water and surface-water parameters were produced by CSIRO. For each variable there is a general description, comprehensive metadata and a distribution map. All data were transformed to a common datum, WGS84, and converted to a grid with a cell size of 0.01 degrees. The metadata reports conform to ANZLIC standards. The data fall into five categories: 1. Bathymetry and geomorphology, derived from the 250 m resolution National Bathymetry Grid at Geoscience Australia; 2. Seabed sediments, derived from the MARS database at Geoscience Australia; 3. Seabed exposure, produced from the output of a seabed shear stress model, GEOMACS, at Geoscience Australia; 4. Bottom-water nutrients and temperature, extracted from the CARS database at CSIRO; 5. Surface-water parameters, derived from satellite images at CSIRO.

The `AGSO Catalog' is a directory or metadatabase* of AGSO's outputs that includes products, publications, datasets and resources. Built using AGSO's corporate Oracle database management system, the Catalog evolved from an earlier `Products Database' that provided a web query and ordering system for all products sold by AGSO's Sales Centre. This function continues, with web interfaces to all products in the Catalog. However, the Catalog also covers external articles, papers and other publications by AGSO staff, datasets that may be either sold or given away, and corporate resources, such as maps, images and GIS datasets, many of which were purchased from outside the organisation. AGSO's web site now includes a Catalog interface for articles and other publications by AGSO staff. The Catalog is designed to capture metadata* at the source ? the author, project manager, research group leader or AGSO Division. Any staff member with an Oracle logon can initiate a new entry in the Catalog via Oracle data entry forms on AGSO?s intranet. The Catalog also facilitates business processes associated with the production of datasets, publications, etc. Various checks and `sign-offs? have been included for quality assurance and to prevent unchecked metadata from appearing on AGSO?s external web site. More business rules will be added as the need arises.

This OGC Catalogue Service for the Web (CSW) provides access to Geoscience Australia's official catalogue of geoscientific and geospatial resources. The Geoscience Australia Product Catalogue contains metadata conforming to the ISO 19115-1 Geographic Information metadata standard, describing resource types including datasets, publications, services, models, software and more. The CSW provides a standards based interface for machines to search and retrieve metadata in the catalogue.