...

Connecting people to resources is an important role of metadata. In addition, it is critical to describe people's role with respect to the resource.

NASA GCMD Directory Interchange Format

The DIF dialect differentiates clearly between documentation of people and organizations. People are documented using the Personnel object with roles of DIF AUTHOR, INVESTIGATOR, and TECHNICAL CONTACT:

<dif:Personnel>
  <dif:Role/>
  <dif:First_Name/>
  <dif:Middle_Name/>
  <dif:Last_Name/>
  <dif:Email/>
  <dif:Phone/>
  <dif:Fax/>
  <dif:Contact_Address>
    <dif:Address/>
    <dif:City/>
    <dif:Province_or_State/>
    <dif:Postal_Code/>
    <dif:Country/>
  </dif:Contact_Address>
</dif:Personnel>

The dialect includes information for one type of organization: the Data Center that distributes the data. The Data Centers are documented using the DataCenter object:

<dif:Data_Center>
  <dif:Data_Center_Name>
    <dif:Short_Name/>
    <dif:Long_Name/>
  </dif:Data_Center_Name>
  <dif:Data_Center_URL/>
  <dif:Data_Set_ID/>
  <dif:Personnel>
    <dif:Role/>
    <dif:First_Name/>
    <dif:Middle_Name/>
    <dif:Last_Name/>
    <dif:Email/>
    <dif:Phone/>
    <dif:Fax/>
    <dif:Contact_Address>
      <dif:Address/>
      <dif:City/>
      <dif:Province_or_State/>
      <dif:Postal_Code/>
      <dif:Country/>
    </dif:Contact_Address>
  </dif:Personnel>
</dif:Data_Center>

ECHO

The ECHO dialect combines people and organizations into the Contact structure:

<Contact>
  <Role/>
  <HoursOfService/>
  <Instructions/>
  <OrganizationName/>
  <OrganizationAddresses>
    <Address>
      <StreetAddress/>
      <City/>
      <StateProvince/>
      <PostalCode/>
      <Country/>
    </Address>
  </OrganizationAddresses>
  <OrganizationPhones>
    <Phone>
      <Number/>
      <Type>voice</Type>
    </Phone>
    <Phone>
      <Number/>
      <Type>fax</Type>
    </Phone>
  </OrganizationPhones>
  <OrganizationEmails>
    <Email/>
  </OrganizationEmails>
  <ContactPersons>
    <ContactPerson>
      <FirstName/>
      <MiddleName/>
      <LastName/>
      <JobPosition/>
    </ContactPerson>
  </ContactPersons>
</Contact>

The ECHO Collection Roles:

Investigator 	 1339
ORNL DAAC User Services 749
Archive 638
TECHNICAL CONTACT 617
DATA CENTER CONTACT 585
DIF AUTHOR 368
Producer 271
Data Manager 225
GHRC USER SERVICES 181
User Services 176
Data Originator 77
TECHNICAL CONTACT, DIF AUTHOR 54
Archiver 40
DIF AUTHOR, TECHNICAL CONTACT 35
INVESTIGATOR, TECHNICAL CONTACT  2
Distributor 2

ECS

<Contact>
  <Role/>
  <HoursofService/>
  <ContactInstructions/>
  <ContactOrganizationAddress>
    <StreetAddress/>
    <City/>
    <StateProvince/>
    <PostalCode/>
    <Country/>
  </ContactOrganizationAddress>
  <OrganizationTelephone>
    <TelephoneNumber/>
    <TelephoneNumberType/>
  </OrganizationTelephone>
  <OrganizationEmail>
    <ElectronicMailAddress/>
  </OrganizationEmail>
  <ContactPersons>
    <ContactFirstName/>
    <ContactMiddleName/>
    <ContactLastName/>
    <ContactJobPosition/>
  </ContactPersons>
</Contact>

Roles

The ECS Collection Metadata include eight roles:

Overview

The ISO standard offers a new and very powerful approach for attaching organizations and people to metadata records. The CI_Responsibility object describes people and organizations that are related to a resource and their roles. It is used throughout the ISO Standards to describe and provide contact information for people and organizations.  This page will review the structure and usage options for the CI_Responsibility object.

Structure

The simple UML for the object is shown here. It includes one required element and four optional elements each of which can occur once.  The CI_Contact includes information about physical and electronic addresses as well as a CI_OnlineResource as part of the contact information. 

ISO Citations can include any number of organizations or people (citedResponsibleParties), each with one of the following roles: resourceProvider, custodian, owner, user, distributor, originator, pointOfContact, principalInvestigator, processor, publisher, or author (see Figure). For example, the principle citation for a metadata record, in the MD_Identification section, can include an author, a publisher, and any number of principal investigators. This is very different than the FGDC approach, where the idinfo section has a citation that can include, but not differentiate roles for, many originators and a single point of contact with no clear role definition.

The capability to have contacts with different roles in citations is very important at NGDC. We are trying to improve our utilization of the lineage sections of our metadata records. Those sections include sources which, in the FGDC, are citations. This works well if the sources are scientific papers, but in many cases, we receive unpublished data from a real person who has a phone number and an e-mail. There is no straightforward way to include that information in the FGDC standard. The ISO citation provides an easy way to do it.

ISO

The ISO dialect combines people and organizations into the CI_ResponsibleParty object, a flexible structure that supports many combinations of organizations and people. Most objects that include associated responsible parties can have any number, so, for example, a citation can have people identified in any or all of the roles listed in the CI_RoleCode code list.

...

<gmd:CI_ResponsibleParty>
  <gmd:individualName/>
  <gmd:organisationName/>
  <gmd:positionName/>
  <gmd:contactInfo>
    <gmd:CI_Contact>
      <gmd:phone/>
      <gmd:address>
        <gmd:CI_Address>
          <gmd:deliveryPoint/>
          <gmd:city/>
          <gmd:administrativeArea/>
          <gmd:postalCode/>
          <gmd:country/>
          <gmd:electronicMailAddress/>
        </gmd:CI_Address>
      </gmd:address>
      <gmd:onlineResource/>
      <gmd:hoursOfService/>
      <gmd:contactInstructions/>
    </gmd:CI_Contact>
  </gmd:contactInfo>
  <gmd:role/>
</gmd:CI_ResponsibleParty>

Roles

CI_RoleCode

...

This table reflects the MENDS Phase 3 voting results for 5.x items pertaining to the mapping of ECHO Roles to ISO Roles.

...