View source for Summer 2007 Session: Inventories for Products and Services - User Requirements, Current Shortcomings and Ways Forward

This discussion session is intended for different user communities to help define information and service inventory needs.  Participants will help define information and service inventory needs for their particular user community, and help determine where existing catalogs, inventories and clearinghouses fall short.   The group will also identify systems, standards and techniques that could be applied to better collect, manage and make the information accessible and meaningful across user communities without duplicating effort.

* What problems do you face that you could use earth science information to help address?
* How do you find earth science data, products and services now?
* In a perfect world, how would you determine what earth science information was available? 
* What is an inventory?  How does it differ from a data catalog?  Do you care, or do you just want to find information?
* What should be inventoried?
* What content should an inventory contain, and at what level of detail? 
* How could inventories be made more useful and accessible to users in your field?
* Do you need to integrate inventory information with other systems or databases, or are you just interested in finding the products or services the inventory describes?
* What existing standards could be applied to improve inventories?
* Are there standard sets of keywords used in your professional community to categorize information?


Contact: Jeff Arnfield (Jeff.Arnfield@noaa.gov)

'''Interested? Add your name below'''
* Jeff Arnfield