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1. Call to Order
Rick Gelbmann called the meeting to order at 8:45 a.m. The meeting was held at LMIC in St. Paul.
Members Present: Gina Buss, BRW Inc.; David Claypool, Ramsey Co.; Ben Ferguson, Coon Rapids; Rick Gelbmann,
Metropolitan Council; Carol Kaszynski, Bloomington; Dan Pfeffer, MAC; Jan Vanderwall, Roseville Area Schools (ISD 623)
Members Absent: Larry Chalupsky, Carver Co.; Lt. Gary Gary, Ramsey County Sheriff Department; Mike Larson,
Resource Strategies; Susanne Maeder, LMIC; Ben Verbick, LOGIS.
Others Present: David Arbeit, LMIC; Chris Cialek, LMIC
Support Staff: Tanya Mayer, Metropolitan Council
2. Acceptance of the Agenda
The agenda was accepted by consensus.
3. Accept Meeting Summary
The March 3, 1998 meeting summary was accepted by consensus.
4. MetroGIS Updates
Rick Gelbmann stated that Jim Sydow had resigned his position at TIES and thus resigned all his positions with
MetroGIS. Rick Gelbmann introduced David Claypool, Ramsey County Surveyor. He is a member of the MetroGIS Coordinating
Committee and the new liaison between the Access Team and the Coordinating Committee.
5. Data Access Advisory Team Chair
Instead of electing a new chair at this meeting, Gelbmann asked that members consider the position and come
prepared at the next meeting to elect a new chair.
6. MetroGIS Data Finder Demo
Tanya Mayer gave a brief demo of the Data Finder functions. Cialek asked about the status of the geographic
search function now that the LBA contract was complete. Mayer explained that Metropolitan Council staff had explored
the options of using ArcView IMS, MapObjects with MO IMS, and the option of the software used at the DNR with Steve
Lime. Work on a geographic search function will continue as time permits. At this time staff have not found any other
similar web sites with the capability of a geographic search. The users at the January Data Finder feed back session
requested some sort of a graphic or geographic search function.
Gelbmann stated that more metadata is needed on the site, and that it was defined as a top priority at the
last Access Team meeting. Metropolitan Council is hiring an intern, interviews are done. The Council plans to integrate
the metadata work with the Washington Co. metadata project, which is an intense study on metadata.
7. Getting Data Finder Operational - Discussion
The first item for discussion was in response to the question of who (a central organization, or the metadata
producer) will run the converter tool on the DataLogr (metadata) file. A consensus that the DataLogr file shall be sent
to Data Finder staff for conversion and that if a producer wants the DataLogr converter tool, they may have it. Data
Finder staff need to be clear that the DataLogr converter tool is just a mechanical tool to change file formats and
that the responsibility for metadata is on the organization.
The second item of discussion was in response to the question of what the procedure should be for getting
metadata to Data Finder and to the MN Node of the NSDI Clearinghouse. A concern was voiced about the inherent problem
of holding 2 separate metadata html files (1 on Data Finder and 1 on MN NSDI Node) and the possibility that they are
not updated at the same time. Either there should be clear procedures that updates be made simultaneously or maybe
there should only be 1 HTML file.
A description of how these 2 sites differ was given. The MN NSDI Clearinghouse node is an index of metadata on
a server at LMIC, just one node of many on the NSDI Clearinghouse. Queries can be made against this database based on a
field(s) in the metadata, or by latitude and longitude. The search returns a list of hits based on the query and the
selected databases to search. It is possible to search only the MN Node. MetroGIS Data Finder contains a set of
metadata records from MetroGIS participants that are categorized in an MS Access database. The application allows staff
to easily generate html pages and an organized web site (html pages are also easy to generate for the MN NSDI
Clearinghouse Node). Users can browse through specific themes or participants for data that is available. These are two
distinct methods of searching for the same metadata.
8. Next Meeting
The next Access Team meeting will be either August 4 or August 11. Task for next meeting is to form some
recommendations on policy implications of managing and updating Data Finder.
9. The meeting was adjourned at 10:40 AM.
Prepared by Tanya Mayer, GIS Specialist, Metropolitan Council
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