----- Forwarded Message -----
From: "Paige Andrew" <[log in to unmask]>
To: "Air Photo Maps, GIS Forum - Map Librarianship" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, February 20, 2010 3:02:24 PM GMT -06:00 US/Canada Central
Subject: Re: Metadata standards for GPS coordinates?

Ken,

Decimal degrees are the way to go. The question of formatting coordinates for the 034s that will be loaded into authority records was discussed at least a year ago if not longer and those involved all agree that because we want to make sure our work is usable not only within the context of traditional cataloging methods but also into other metadata areas coordinates should be formatted in decimal form over hddmmss form.

Paige

At 12:54 PM 2/19/2010, you wrote:




-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Metadata standards for GPS coordinates?
Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2010 10:36:59 -0700
From: Ken Rockwell <[log in to unmask]>
To: Maps, Air Photo, GIS Forum - Map Librarianship <[log in to unmask]>


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