Your metadata and the gigateway Data Locator
Gigateway is always interested in updating and adding new metadata to ensure continued success and many organisations are already committed to the service, using gigateway as data providers and data users - but we need your help too! The more high quality metadata the service contains, the more useful gigateway becomes as a source of geospatial information.

The Benefits
We are interested in providing discovery level access to all kinds of geospatial data covering the environment, transport, mapping, biodiversity, business, agriculture, planning and many more themes of information. Not only does this improve awareness of what geographic datasets exist within the UK's public and private sectors, it also allows our users, many of whom are researchers, academic institutions and central and local government departments, to see which datasets suit their needs best and puts them in direct contact with data suppliers.

For private and commercial data suppliers this is an obvious avenue for increased sales for little effort, whilst for public sector metadata providers it helps prevent duplication of effort, encourages data sharing and complies with the e-GIF. Click here to see how the Data Locator works.

Those organisations who show their support by publishing metadata on gigateway are automatically eligible for an expanded entry with full colour logo in gigateway's Data Directory.

How to Publish Your Metadata
Publishing metadata on gigateway's Data Locator is free of charge and has been made as simple as possible with the development of MetaGenie, gigateway's specially developed metadata creation software.

If your organisation holds many hundreds or thousands of metadata records, you are likely to require the full, stand alone desktop version of MetaGenie to manage your records internally, as well publishing externally via gigateway. You will also either host your own gigateway node, or contribute to an existing relevant aggregated node (for example, the IGGI node for central government departments). For further details on either of these options, please contact Robert Turner, our Technical Officer, who will explain things in details and assist you in the process.

If you are a small organisation or one which has only a small number of metadata records to publish, you can use either the desktop or the Online version of MetaGenie to contribute to the gigateway catalogue node. The quickest and most efficient way would be be to register for MetaGenie Online, allowing you to directly create, upload and manage your metadata records on gigateway via a web browser and login. Once again, we can help with any queries you may have.