Confluence Retirement

Due to the feedback from stakeholders and our commitment to not adversely impact USGS science activities that Confluence supports, we are extending the migration deadline to January 2023.

In an effort to consolidate USGS hosted Wikis, myUSGS’ Confluence service is targeted for retirement. The official USGS Wiki and collaboration space is now SharePoint. Please migrate existing spaces and content to the SharePoint platform and remove it from Confluence at your earliest convenience. If you need any additional information or have any concerns about this change, please contact myusgs@usgs.gov. Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.
Online Metadata Editor
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This space provides general information about the USGS Online Metadata Editor (OME), including help documentation, announcements of updates and improvements, and a community forum for questions and answers about the tool and the standard it supports.

Latest Updates and Improvements

Last Release Date:  18 April 2019 (Release 2.23.1)

Improvements, Modifications, and New Features:

  • Theme Keywords: Use of the USGS Thesaurus is now required as the first instance of theme keywords provided for USGS metadata records. Users are free to use additional, relevant theme keyword thesauri and individual theme keywords not in the USGS Thesaurus in their metadata, in addition to at least one theme keyword chosen from the USGS Thesaurus. Required use of the USGS Thesaurus in OME is intended to facilitate discovery of data in the USGS Science Data Catalog by means of keyword browsing of topics.
  • Format of Originator/Author Names: OME is now formally specifying the format LastName, FirstName (MI) for all individual Originator names in the record. This is intended to provide better normalization of USGS author names in the USGS Science Data Catalog, and other downstream metadata catalogs such as data.gov and the GeoPlatform.


Technical Problem With OME?

If you are experiencing a technical problem with the OME (e.g., problems saving or locating your record; lost data; timeout issues; a field not working as expected), please use the OME Service Desk to report the issue. You will generate a ticket to describe your issue. Using the Service Desk helps to ensure that the OME development team is promptly notified of a potential problem, and allows you to track the status and progress of your reported issue until it is resolved.

Known and Reported Issues

ISSUE: Loss of data in the metadata record for records with large Entity/Attribute sections

REPORTED:  

STATUS: Investigating. Several users have reported a loss of data in specific sections of their metadata record, including

  • disappearing Attributes after a Save
  • disappearing Enumerated and Unrepresentable Domains after a Save
  • truncation of required metadata fields at the end of the record (specifically, the metadata standard and version fields) that is reported when the user attempts to validate the record (OME generates this information automatically when the record is created, so this information should never be missing from a record)

The common denominator to each of these reported problems has been a record with an Entity/Attribute section that contains a large number of Attributes, or Attributes with many Enumerated or Unrepresentable Domains.

In previous releases, OME was re-engineered to support large numbers of Attributes and Domains. We are currently trying to determine if there has been a corruption in the OME's codebase, or if these recent records have surpassed existing thresholds on Attributes and Domains. Records that contain an extensive Entity/Attribute section do take more time to load in the OME webform, and the Save and Auto-save of these records also takes more time, as these records are pushed back and forth across the network.

ADVISORY:

If you are starting a new metadata record, or uploading an existing record, that will contain a very large Entity/Attribute section (in excess of 50 Attributes, or with multiple Attributes that contain a large number of Domains, you should consider the following:

  • using a different CSDGM metadata editor (Metadata Wizard (link to https://www.usgs.gov/software/metadata-wizard-20), TKME (link to https://geology.usgs.gov/tools/metadata/tools/doc/tkme.html), or mdEditor (link to https://www.mdeditor.org/ ) are possibilities)
  • if using OME, doing frequent 'Save & Preview Formatted' actions to preview what OME is retaining in the record (even if you are still seeing content in the Entity/Attributes webform, all of those fields may not be saved/written to the final record)
  • doing occasional 'download XML without validating' actions to keep a running account of your record as you enter it, in the event that some metadata is lost at the point where you're ready to 'validate and download' your final record (you'll still have a copy of those lost fields that can be restored in the XML)
  • if you confirm that your record is losing information, we recommend performing a 'download XML without validating' action and importing that XML record into a different editor to complete your work

The banner advisory on the OME login and interior pages will remain posted until the issue is fully resolved.

An updated message will be posted here as soon as we have more information about the nature of this issue, and the planned resolution. We regret any inconvenience to your efforts to complete your metadata.

PRIORITY: high



Browser Advisory

The OME is optimized for Google Chrome, and we recommend that users choose Chrome when accessing this editor. Generally speaking, the OME performs adequately in Firefox and Safari; however, the user interface may look and behave slightly differently in these browsers.

The OME is not completely functional in Internet Explorer, and we therefore strongly urge users to not use Internet Explorer to access this tool. Because Microsoft discontinued further development of IE in 2015, the browser no longer includes up to date code libraries that are necessary for many applications, including OME, to operate correctly. You are at risk of losing your metadata, being unable to correctly save your metadata, and being unable to use key functionality in the OME if you choose to login using Internet Explorer.

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  1. Trippi, Michael H.

    Is there a way to reorder the keywords after they have been entered (e.g. alphabetical order)? Similarly, is there a way to reorder the attributes after they have been entered (e.g. left-to-right order as they appear in a spreadsheet)?