#    '$RCSfile: README,v $'
#    Copyright: 2000 Regents of the University of California and the
#               National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis
#  For Details: http://knb.ecoinformatics.org/
#
#     '$Author: jones $'
#       '$Date: 2001-07-31 22:09:42 $'
#   '$Revision: 1.10 $'
# 
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
# Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA

EML: Ecological Metadata Language
---------------------------------

Version: 2.0beta3 Release

Feedback and bugs to: knb-software@nceas.ucsb.edu

Contributors: Matt Jones (jones@nceas.ucsb.edu)
              Chad Berkley (berkley@nceas.ucsb.edu)
              Jivka Bojilova (bojilova@nceas.ucsb.edu)
              Dan Higgins (higgins@nceas.ucsb.edu)
              Chris Jones (cjones@lifesci.ucsb.edu)
              Corinna Gries (corinna@asu.edu)
              Noah Goldstein
              Zheng Wang

Web site: http://knb.ecoinformatics.org/software/eml

The Ecological Metadata Language consists of a number of modules that define
an XML markup syntax for ecologically relevant metadata.  It was originally
based on work done by the ESA Committee on the Future of Long-Term
Ecological Data (http://esa.sdsc.edu/FLED/FLED.html) and on a related paper
on ecological metadata by Michener et al. (see Michener, William K., et al., 
1997. Ecological Appications, "Nongeospatial metadata for the ecological 
sciences" Vol 7(1). pp. 330-342.).  Version 1.4 follows that paper closely in
its implementation, but Version 2 has been modified substantially after
experience using the standard and from feedback from the ecological community.

DOCUMENTATION
-------------
Please see the docs/index.html directory for a detailed description 
of each of the modules.

FILES
-----
The files in this directory include both a Document Type Definition and 
an XML Schema document for each of the following modules, as well as 
complete documentation in the "docs" directory:

Access control               eml-access.[xsd,dtd]
Attribute (variable) info    eml-attribute.[xsd,dtd]
Integrity constraints        eml-constraint.[xsd,dtd]
Geographic, temporal and     eml-coverage.[xsd,dtd]
  taxonomic coverage
Data set info                eml-dataset.[xsd,dtd]
Distribution info            eml-distribution.[xsd,dtd]
Data entity (table) info     eml-entity.[xsd,dtd]
Citation info                eml-literature.[xsd,dtd]
People and organizations     eml-party.[xsd,dtd]
Physical format info         eml-physical.[xsd,dtd]
Research project info        eml-project.[xsd,dtd]
Methods and QA/QC            eml-protocol.[xsd,dtd]
Basic resource info          eml-resource.[xsd,dtd]
Software info                eml-software.[xsd,dtd]

Also included is a schema for supporting documentation:
Schema documentation info    eml-documentation.xsd

The above files are a part of the proposed release of EML 2.0.  
This release of EML can be retrieved from CVS using the 
tag "RELEASE_EML_2_BETA_3".  Previous versions of EML (such as 1.4) 
are available from this repository using the
appropriate release tag (i.e. RELEASE_EML_1_4).

KNOWN ISSUES (see also http://bugzilla.ecoinformatics.org/)
-----------------------------------------------------------
1) eml-distribution needs to be revisited, possibly eliminating this
   module and folding its content into eml-resource
2) Multiline records supported sufficiently in eml-physical?
3) Check if eml-coverage uses eml-literature rather than citeinfo?
4) Check if eml-coverage uses ResponsibleParty rather than cntinfo?
5) Possibly eliminate eml-distribution (Bug 174)
6) Should eml-project extend ResourceBase? several fields overlap...

Legalese
--------
This software is copyrighted by The Regents of the University of California
and the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis
and licensed under the GNU GPL; see the 'LICENSE' file for
details.

This material is based upon work supported by the 
National Science Foundation under Grant No. DEB99-80154 and DBI99-04777.
Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recomendations expressed in this
material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect 
the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).