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

No abstract available

This Record provides a description of the development and use of the version of the AGSO Library catalogue accessible from AGSO's World Wide Web site. The Library's in-house catalogue of books and serials is part of the Datatrek Professional Series library management system. Although this system operates from a Novell network server, the lack of integration of AGSO's Novell networks and lack of access to them from the Unix system means that direct access to Datatrek system is only available in the Library itself. Also, the Datatrek system has no provision for access, either directly or indirectly, from the Internet. In the interests of making the Library catalogue more readily available to both AGSO's staff and AGSO's clients, a decision was made to develop a version of the Datatrek catalogue as an Oracle database, and that that version would be made available on the World Wide Web of the Internet with a forms-based search interface usable on any Web browser.

An integrated package comprising geological, structural, geophysical, geochronological and geochemical data. The GIS encompasses the outcropping and covered portions of Palaeoproterozoic and Mesoproterozoic rocks straddling the NSW-SA border (the Broken Hill, Euriowie, Olary, Mount Painter and Mount Babbage Inliers). The GIS features recent data collected by the Broken Hill Exploration Initiative.

This report provides detailed descriptions (metadata) of 45 Australian marine environmental datasets that have been generated and collated by the Marine Biodiversity Hub as part of Theme 3 - National Ecosystems Knowledge, Project 1 - Shelf and Canyon Ecosystems Functions and Processes. The report also includes a map for each dataset to illustrate coverage and general spatial structure. The datasets contain both marine environmental and biological variables from diverse data sources and include both new and updated information. Among them, the national bathymetry grid and derived products, seabed sediment grids, seabed exposure (GEOMACS) parameters, water quality data, the national canyon dataset and connectivity layers were produced by Geoscience Australia. Other environmental and biological datasets are the outputs of oceanographic models and collections of various governmental and research organisations. These datasets are important for the success of marine biodiversity research in Theme 3 Project 1 in that they describe key aspects of Australian marine physical, geochemical and biological environments. The physical and geochemical datasets not only characterise the static seabed features but also capture the temporal variation and three-dimensional interactions within marine ecosystems. The biological datasets represent a unique collection of fish and megafauna data available at the national scale. Together, these marine environmental datasets enhance our understanding of large-scale ecological processes driving marine biodiversity patterns. However, we should be aware of the uncertainties and potential errors exist in these datasets due to limitations of data collection and processing methods. Data quality issues of individual datasets have been documented in this report where possible.

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.

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.

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.

The role of Geoscience Australia (GA) is to provide first class geoscientific information and knowledge which enables government and community to make informed decisions about: - the exploitation of resources - the management of the environment - the safety of critical infrastructure and - the resultant wellbeing of all Australians. GA has two internal catalogues which hold metadata of significant value to external researchers. The catalogues include national collections of satellite images/datasets; geological and topographical maps of various scales; Maritime, Aboriginal Commission and Postcode boundary datasets, plus other geoscientific thematic maps and collections. Staff from GA and ANDS worked together to analyse the catalogues, map them to the ISO19115 metadata schema and provide a gap analysis to inform further development. The original intention was to cross walk the 19115 profile to RIF-CS and install an OAI-PMH harvest point. ANDS, however, was able to utilise funded work by AuScope by having an instance of GeoNetwork deployed in GA, which provides this capability and can be leveraged to expose this data at the same time. This mapping also allows data of relevance to other disciplines such as that relevant to marine research to be identified and appropriate feeds established. The more significant achievement for GA was that it is now able to dynamically map from two existing independent internal catalogues to a single standards compliant instance, without having to first create a single internal catalogue and then migrate metadata from various catalogues into it. This approach will be used for other data types where GA has several internal databases of the same data type. This poster explores the issues that confronted the team, the solutions developed and the opportunities that have arisen.