Scientists can look forward to using more sophisticated applications such as those being developed at the University of California at Santa Barbara in conjunction with the Alexandria Digital Library Project and the U.S. Geological Survey's Marine Realms Information Bank (mrib.usgs.gov). The efforts of the Federal Geographic Data Committee and the Online Computer Library Center (www.oclc.org) to develop a workable crosswalk between MARC 21--used by the library science field--and Dublin Core fields--a content standard of digital geospatial metadata used by those dealing with spatial data--will ultimately lead to powerful and flexible information mining tools. [The Dublin Core fields are a set of elements developed by the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, an open forum that is developing interoperable online metadata standards. MARC 21 formats are widely used standards for representing and exchanging authority, bibliographic, classification, community information, and holdings data in machine readable form. The crosswalk referenced is a mapping from the Dublin Core Element Set to the MARC 21 bibliographic data elements.] The convergence of georeferenced data and manipulation of bibliographic information promise a qualitative leap in the access to and analysis of information.
Miller, S.L. and Crosby, M.P. (1998). The Extent and Condition of US Coral Reefs [Online]. Available: NOAA's State of the Coast Report. Silver Spring, Maryland: NOAA.
(state-of-coast.noaa.gov/bulletins/html/crf_08/crf.html).
Chandler, A., Foley, D., and Hafez, A. (1999). Mapping and Converting
Essential Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) Metadata into
MARC 21 and Dublin Core: Towards an Alternative to the FGDC Clearinghouse
[Online]. Available (eeirc.nwrc.gov/pubs/crosswalk/fgdc-marc-dc.htm).
Created: 1999-06-14; Revised: 1999-07-02, 1999-08-02, 1999-10-13;
Current version: 1999-12-14.
David E. Coleman is responsible for marine-related reference services for the Science and Technology Department of the Hamilton Library at the University of Hawaii.
Paul L. Jokiel, Ph.D., is principal investigator of the Coral Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program (CRAMP) based at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology at the University of Hawaii.
Eric Hill is a research associate with the Coral Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program (CRAMP). He serves as the programmer and Web master for the CRAMP Web site.
Naomi Bentivoglio is a wildlife biologist with the USFWS, Pacific Islands Ecoregion, Honolulu, Hawaii. Her focus is near-shore environmental management issues.
The authors acknowledge the valuable participation of Rod Low, Craig Rowland, Kevin Foster, and Chris Swenson of the USFWS in developing this project.
