Levels of Metadata
At the top level GIgateway is promoting and setting up a service based upon Discovery of data resources. This Discovery metadata provides sufficient information to enable an inquirer to ascertain that existence of data fit for purpose exists and to reference some point of contact for more information. If, after discovery, more detail is needed about individual datasets then more comprehensive and more specific metadata is required. It is possible that organisations may wish to develop metadata at different but complementary levels - at one level discovery metadata for external use and for in-house / internal use more detailed metadata. And to avoid duplication of effort those elements common to both are flagged.

The level of metadata detail that will be documented is dependent on the type of data held and the methods that it is being accessed and used. Different types of data (e.g. vector ,raster, textual, imagery, thematic, boundary, polygon, attribute, point, etc.) will require different levels and forms of metadata to be collected. However there is still a high degree of compatibility between most of the metadata elements required.

Similarly organisations will look at different ways to manage their data. Some organisations manage information as a dataset, tiles of datasets, series of datasets, or manage the information down to the feature level.