The ECAI Metadata Clearinghouse
IntroductionThe TimeMap™ project has developed the core technology for the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (ECAI): The Metadata Clearinghouse. One of the primary goals of ECAI is to be able to drill down through time and space and choose from a rich array of primary materials from multiple scholars and sources. Therefore, one of the primary funcitons of ECAI is to create a catalog of a wide range of cultural data and make it accessible in a single interface. The system developed for managing and cataloging data is the ECAI Metadata Clearinghouse. ECAI's Metadata Clearinghouse includes records which describe datasets or map layers. ECAI metadata records include bibliographic and descriptive metadata for resource discovery allowing identification of resources relevant to a particular place, time or thematic interest. They also contain connection metadata for each dataset which allows software such as TimeMap™ to connect to the data server across the Internet (or to local files), drill down into the data and integrate results from different datasets (heterogeneous distributed database query.)
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