Refine Theme values

[kgjenkins]

Currently, the Aardvark schema uses ISO Topic Categories with only a minor change: "that the terms are capitalized and spaced for better readability." The suggested values are listed here

I would like to propose going just a bit further to improve the user experience:

• A. "Agriculture" instead of "Farming", in line with the terminology that is most commonly used in academia and in these datasets.
• B. "Climate" instead of the verbose "Climatology, Meteorology and Atmosphere" in order to keep it short, improving the display in facets, etc.
• C. "Geology" instead of the unnecessarily verbose "Geoscientific Information" ("information" and "scientific" aren't used in the names of any of the other categories, even though they would apply equally)
• D. Split "Imagery and Base Maps" into two separate categories, "Imagery" (photos, etc.) and "Base Maps" (cartographic maps) as these are distinctly different types of datasets and it is useful to be able to search one without the other.
• D2. Also add a separate "Landcover" category (which was part of the original ISO "imageryBaseMapsEarthCover" category)
• E. "Military" instead of "Intelligence and Military" (everything in the description is military)
• F. "Property" instead of "Planning and Cadastral" (some types of "planning" belong in other categories, and I suspect that "cadastral" is not commonly understood by many users)
• G. "Utilities" instead of "Utilities and Communication" (communication is already a subset of utilities)

We've been happily using these modified topic categories for many years in CUGIR (listed on the home page) and https://geolode.org/

If we were to use such modified terms, I'd suggest simply calling them "Categories" or "Topics" rather than "ISO Topic Categories", since they have been altered.

[kgjenkins]

I just added D2 above (to keep the whole proposal together)

[karenmajewicz]

I agree that these changes would improve user experience, but might not be straightforward for everyone to implement in their current ISO or FGDC to GBL workflows?

Maybe this is an opportunity to use a linked data strategy. We could have the dcat_theme_sm field values be selected from a code list that correspond to the ISO topic categories. Then, a configuration file would determine the spelling and display. There are so many different ways people write out the ISO categories, especially across continents. And, I don't know that users find them all that helpful anyways...

[kgjenkins]

Putting the full originial ISO term like "climatologyMeteorologyAtmosphere" in the GBL metadata and then using GBL config to show a nice label could work except in the case of D/D2 splitting "imageryBaseMapsEarthCover" into 3 separate categories, which I acknowledge would be tricky to automate.

It's unfortunate that that category was defined by ISO to conflate 3 very different types of data. If I'm looking for imagery, I certainly don't want a cartographic base map or landcover polygons...

[kgjenkins]

And if we want searching to work, then having "imageryBaseMapsEarthCover" in the solr record isn't going to match a search for "basemaps".

[rmseifried]

FYI the Aardvark documentation has been migrated to this page: ISO Topic Category

[rmseifried]

In the Metadata Interest Group meeting today (11/4/21) we agreed:

• to rename the dcat_theme_sm field from ISO Topic Category to Theme - we will draw inspiration from the ISO Topic Categories but not be beholden to them
• to split the original category imageryBaseMapsEarthCover into Imagery and Land Cover
• to simplify the names of several other theme categories (including Agriculture, Climate, and so on)

Some topics that were raised, but not decided:

• Basemaps could potentially be tagged with other themes, but perhaps we should also add this to the Resource Type field (see the related issue here)
• Location might be a confusing label for some users
• Longing for an Events category

Still to do:

• confirm new descriptions for Elevation, Imagery, and Land Cover in the GeoBlacklight metadata analysis spreadsheet (tab Theme / ISO Topics)
• rename the field to Theme
• update the Purpose, Entry Guidelines, Commentary, and Example Value for this field
• update the OpenGeoMetadata website with the new info

[rmseifried]

Resumed discussion in the Metadata Interest Group meeting today (12/2/21). See the proposed changes for the newly renamed Theme field here:

• new descriptions about the field
• new controlled vocab

We couldn't think of any particular items that would be orphaned by the changes we made to the controlled vocab; however, items tagged as "imageryBaseMapsEarthCover" will need to be parsed out into either "Imagery" or "Land Cover" (or another field as appropriate). Base maps can be described using the Resource Type field (see the related issue here).

The proposed changes are ready to be brought to the GB community for discussion before implementing on the OpenGeoMetadata website.

[rmseifried]

Re: whether to rename field as "theme", code in v.4.0.0.alpha of GeoBlacklight references the field as "ISO_TOPIC_CATEGORY" in several files (settings.yml, _home_text.html.erb, catalog_controller.rb)

[karenmajewicz]

This has been implemented into the official documentation on opengeometadata