Why You Should Look at the NBII-SAIN Data Management Toolkit

Tom Burley from the USGS Texas Water Science Center in Austin, TX wrote to tell me about a new report from USGS that I think will be of interest to many readers.

I recently finished a USGS publication examining this incredibly broad issue of data and information management in the context of the natural resource management efforts of a high-elevation ecosystem. This stems from a two year study I co-directed that looked at how these issues were addressed. It’s available here as a USGS Open File Report Publication: http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2009/1170/

We intended this to be applicable to all natural resource management contexts, but particularly, the on-the-ground scenarios and folks doing the real work and making the real decisions. We looked at a number of issues including everything from project planning to database design concepts to free FGDC metadata tools and example workflows. ... I think it is a good starting point at looking at these issues holistically.
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It is a somewhat long publication, but I think pages 1-8 of the actual document along with the Table of Contents provide a good high-level overview and understanding of its content and relevance to issues everyone is dealing with today.