-------- Original Message --------
Subject:        Re: Metadata standards for GPS coordinates?
Date:   Mon, 22 Feb 2010 09:41:33 -0500
From:   Paige Andrew <[log in to unmask]>
To:     Maps, Air Photo, GIS Forum - Map Librarianship
<[log in to unmask]>, [log in to unmask]
References:     <[log in to unmask]>



Still come out looking like gibberish Angie, but
that is because you cannot use a proper character
set for special characters in something like
email, it just doesn't recognize it. Ken's
examples below are (and in doing cataloging would
be flipped -- West and East hemispheres come
first, followed by North and South):

N 68[degrees]22.987[minutes]/W 146[degrees]24.882[minutes]

N 48[degrees]15.048[minutes]/W 121[degrees]48.973[minutes]

I also just read Joel's concern about using the +
(plus) and - (minus) signs with decimal degrees
and the confusion it can/may cause. Sure isn't
easy to remember at first for me either, and yet
that is because I have yet to become comfortable
with the decimal degree format as I am with DMS
format. But, that will have to change in time I
suppose. And, the cataloger's out there should
know that Joel's prompt several months ago got
me, Susan Moore, and Mary Larsgaard busy helping
OCLC to update the examples that are in OCLC's
Bib. Input Standards for both the 034 field and
the 255 field. You will note in particular that
their is something like three variant methods for
showing coordinates in decimal format, so the
standard is allowing some flexibility here, which
it needs to. OCLC finished updating the pages for
the 034 and 255 fields with new/edited/changed
examples, and the three of us who worked on this
over a period of months aimed to make these as
up-to-date and usable as possible -- we hope we succeeded!

Paige

At 09:09 AM 2/22/2010, Angie Cope wrote:
>I'm forwarding Ken's original email again to see if the formatting can
>come through correctly. I've heard from a few people that the original
>message was gibberish. Let's try this again.
>
>-------- Original Message --------
>
>Folks, my current work involves working in digital collections metadata,
>and some digital objects have fairly detailed GPS coordinates provided.
>I’m wondering if there is a “best practices” standard for their format,
>which may vary considerably. Here are a couple of examples from recent
>submissions:
>
>N 68°22.987´/W 146°24.882´
>
>N 48 15.048° W 121 48.973°
>
>The first one looks better to me, but any advice on proper format,
>including punctuation, will be welcome. I also note that it appears the
>degree sign can be problematic for Content-dm to recognize, so maybe the
>word “degrees” should be spelled out.
>
>Sorry if this is not as map-related as it should be, but it seems a good
>forum to reach people who might also know something about this related
>subject.
>
>--Ken Rockwell
>
>Univ. of Utah