Member Introductions

Please add a paragraph about your work with metadata reviews, to assist other community members in finding colleagues who are also dealing with particular issues.

Fran Lightsom, flightsom@usgs.gov

Coastal and Marine Geology Program, Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center

I manage people and projects that manage data, so I supervise the review of metadata for the new data release process and the review of old metadata to discover errors, out-of-date things, and opportunities for improvements. I am concerned that metadata provide adequate information so that our data will be appropriate for long-term preservation under the National Archives by establishing authenticity, reliability, integrity, and usability. I am also the USGS Ocean Data Ambassador, so I have special interest in metadata that makes our data easier to discover, when the metadata is harvested by catalogs like Data.gov and the USGS Science Data Catalog.

Alan Allwardt, aallwardt@usgs.gov 

Coastal and Marine Geology Program, Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center

I'm one of those people managed by Fran. In FY2017 I will review the use of keywords in CMGP metadata records and make recommendations for improving the discoverability of these records in Data.gov and the USGS Science Data Catalog. One foundation for this work will be the CDI-funded Controlled Vocabulary Manifesto.

Rob Miller, rfmiller@usgs.gov

Energy Resources Program, Central Energy Resources Science Center

I work on a Data Management Services Project and most of my time is consumed working on geospatial development projects, but I do occasionally review metadata.  Part of our project's objective is to assist scientists in creating comprehensive, valuable, and standard compliant metadata to ensure that the data is both discoverable and usable.  I am still fairly new in my position and I am looking forward to learning from the experts.  

Curtis Price, cprice@usgs.gov

USGS Office of Enterprise Information/Enterprise GIS, Dakota Science Center

My career-long (since 1990) work with the OEI Enterprise GIS team (which supports geospatial activites across the Bureau and coordinates across the Department) has included promoting and assisting in the development and implementation of quality metadata. My participation in national efforts such as NAWQA, WaterSMART, and the National Geospatial Program's current HR NHDPlus effort) have required much work with the metadata guidance, development, review, and distribution.  I am a member of the FGDC Metadata Working Group, and moderate the metadata special interest group at the Esri User Conference.  I maintain an OEI/EGIS webpage directed at users of Esri software: Documenting Esri data sets with metadata.

Peter Schweitzer, pschweitzer@usgs.gov

Mineral Resources, Eastern Mineral and Environmental Resources Science Center

I gather scientific data released to the public by the Mineral Resources Program, and make the data easier to find, get, and use, by improving the packaging, format, and documentation of the data and by creating web interfaces that help technically capable non-specialists make use of the data.  I've worked on metadata since 1994, wrote mp in early 1995, and have worked with many collections of USGS metadata over the years.  I maintain collections of metadata at geo-nsdi.er.usgs.gov and mrdata.usgs.gov and, with a small group of others, developed the USGS Thesaurus and some other controlled vocabularies for use as keywords in metadata and data catalog systems.

Kim Kloecker, kkloecker@usgs.gov

Marine Ecology Office, Alaska Science Center

In addition to short-term studies about sea otters and their habitat, I work on a long-term marine ecosystem monitoring program. I act as data manager for our team and am often called on by other researchers at ASC to help get them started on their data management journey. I author a lot of metadata for ecological data sets and more and more am wearing the dataset reviewer hat. My position is firmly in the research world but I crossover to the data management world often enough to be considered a liaison between the two. I'm looking forward to learning a lot more about data management and metadata by participating in this group.

Mike Wieczorek, mewieczo@usgs.gov

Maryland-Delaware-Washington D.C. Water Science Center

I have worked as a Geographer/GIS Specialist since 1992 for NAWQA and am currently working with the Water Balance Estimation and Evaluation Project (WBEEP), and the National GeoSpatial Program's Hydrologic Geospatial Fabric (NHGF) . Much of my work has involved creating and publishing a lot of spatial data.  I am familiar with FGDC standards, reviewing, and writing metadata as well as IPDS and Science Base.

Cyndi Rachol, crachol@usgs.gov

Upper Midwest Water Science Center

My adventure with writing metadata started out while I was still a student employee in 1999, working on mostly GIS tasks. While assisting my project chiefs with their research, I grew to value well-written and informative metadata. Skipping to nearly 20 years later, I may not be focused primarily on geospatial data anymore, but am responsible for creating unique datasets that do not have a home in NWIS. As a project chief, I've become very interested in publishing data through ScienceBase and soon found myself diving in to learn more about the resources available and this community. I might not be a specialist nor do I have any other unique skills to bring to the table, but I can at least claim to find enjoyment in helping my colleagues by providing a thorough review.