ICSM ISO19115-1 Metadata Best Practice Guide

Parent Metadata ★★

When a metadata record inherits information from a parent record, it is important to capture sufficient information so that this parent record can be found an the hierarchy preserved.

   
Element Name parentMetadata
Parent MD_Metadata
Class/Type CI_Citation
Governance Agency, Domain
Purpose Discovery, Data Management
Audience machine resource - ⭑ ⭑ ⭑
  general - ⭑ ⭑ ⭑
  resource manager - ⭑ ⭑ ⭑ ⭑ ⭑
  specialist - ⭑ ⭑ ⭑ ⭑
Metadata type dicovery, administrative
ICSM Level of Agreement ⭑ ⭑ ⭑

Definition

Citation to a parent metadata record, to enable construction of hierarchical relations.

ISO Obligation

Discussion

There currently exists very little guidance for what qualifies as a parent metadata and when this element should be used. This could work well for feature level metadata where the parent is a dataset and the child a feature. Or a map series where the series is the parent and the tiles the children. Does the parent child hierarchical relation exist between the resources or the metadata records? (One metadata record could inherit attributes from a parent without such a relation between the resources being documented.) The cardinality rules only allow one parent, but it is concievable that a metadata record could inherit parts from multiple parents.

Outstanding Issues

What qualifies a metadata record as a parent? If we include this as a recommended element, the MDWG should provide some guidance as to what qualifies as a parent metadata record. This is a CI_Citation element so it has the all the capabilities of that package. We need to decide which fields are necessary given that a requirement should be a link to the parent metadata record.

ICSM Best Practice Recommendations

Follow the general guidance for CI_Citation

Crosswalk considerations

RIF-CS

Maps to RelatedInfo/relation='partOf'

Also Consider

Examples

Example Current Use

XML -

<mdb:MD_Metadata>
....
   <mdb:parentMetadata>
      <cit:CI_Citation>
         <cit:title>
            <gco:CharacterString>Geographical Data Series</gco:CharacterString>
         </cit:title>
         <cit:identifier>
            <mcc:MD_Identifier>
               <mcc:code>
                  <gco:CharacterString>8668cb6b-b594-4394-8e2c-f554bace859f
                  </gco:CharacterString>
               </mcc:code>
            </mcc:MD_Identifier>
         </cit:identifier>
         <cit:onlineResource>
            <cit:CI_OnlineResource>
               <cit:linkage>
                  <gco:CharacterString>
                  https://geodata.nz/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#
                  /metadata/8668cb6b-b594-4394-8e2c-f554bace859f
                  </gco:CharacterString>
               </cit:linkage>
               <cit:protocol gco:nilReason="missing">
                  <gco:CharacterString/>
               </cit:protocol>
               <cit:name gco:nilReason="missing">
                  <gco:CharacterString/>
               </cit:name>
               <cit:description gco:nilReason="missing">
                  <gco:CharacterString/>
               </cit:description>
               <cit:function>
                  <cit:CI_OnLineFunctionCode 
                  codeList="https://schemas.isotc211.org/19115/resources
                  /Codelist/cat/codelists.xml#CI_OnLineFunctionCode" 
                  codeListValue=""/>
               </cit:function>
            </cit:CI_OnlineResource>
         </cit:onlineResource>
      </cit:CI_Citation>
  </mdb:parentMetadata>
....
</mdb:MD_Metadata>

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UML diagrams

Recommended elements highlighted in yellow

ParentMetadata

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