USGS Multimedia Gallery: (Video)--Exploring ScienceBase Items

ScienceBase Catalog Training Video #3 – Item Details

In the last ScienceBase training video, we learned how

to search for items in ScienceBase Catalog based on keywords

and how to find relevant results based on the title, item type,

summary, and location. In this video, we’ll demonstrate how to

explore all the information available about a metadata record.

To begin, let’s revisit our previous search. Click in the search

bar and type Yampa. Click Search or press enter. Once the results

come up, click the title of the result entitled “Evaluation of trends

in pH in the Yampa River.” This result may be relevant to

our search but we need to find out a little more about it. To the

right of the title click the More Info link. We are redirected to

the catalog entry for this metadata record. This is the

ScienceBase item page where all of the information about this

metadata record is displayed in three columns. The center

column contains the summary or abstract of the piece. Below

the summary the item type and date of publication are listed.

If you are interested in seeing all the metadata for this record,

click the more information link. The metadata for this record

is shown in a pop-up window. You can scroll through and

inspect all of the metadata available for this record. When

you are finished inspecting the metadata click the small x in

the upper right hand corner of the pop-up window. Below the

item type and publication date is the access resource section.

The links in this section will vary depending on the item type.

Journal citations and publications will often have a link to the

full text while metadata records for large data sets may have

a link to a web service or to download the data set. This item

has a geospatial footprint so it is shown here. The left hand

column will show the display image for this record if one is

available. In this case the display image is the cover page of

the report. Below that we see the data owner. In ScienceBase

Catalog many items have a data owner, an organization that is

responsible for updating and maintaining the data. In the

lower left hand column, the Provenance section describes

where this record came from. In this case it was harvested

from the USGS publications warehouse or Pubs. The right

hand column shows many ways that this item is related to

other items in the catalog. At the top we can see that this

item is part of the UCRB virtual catalog, or Upper Colorado River

Basin. In ScienceBase, a virtual catalog is a way to group

items that are all related to the same project. Below the virtual

catalog we can see the tags for this item. Tags are informal

keywords describing the item that might not be found in

the title but are still relevant. The information listed in the

different sections of this page are links to more information.

For example, we can click on one of the tags, surface water

quality, and see other records that have the same tag. Click

the back button on your browser to return to the item

information page. The intertwining of information and the

ability to click keywords, people, and communities promotes

information discovery, sharing, and distribution. In this

video we learned how to access detailed information about

a metadata record in ScienceBase Catalog.