Mercury is a distributed metadata management, data discovery and access system. It is a scientific data search system to capture and manage

biogeochemical Biogeochemistry is the scientific discipline that involves the study of the chemical, physical, geological, and biological processes and reactions that govern the composition of the natural environment (including the biosphere, the cryosphere, th ...

and ecological data in support of the Earth science programs funded by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) and United States Geological Survey (USGS) - Department of Interior (DOI). Mercury was originally developed for NASA, but the consortium is now supported by USGS and the DOE. Ongoing development of Mercury is done through an informal consortium at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Mercury is a part of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Environmental Sciences Division (ESD) and a contributor to the Climate Change Science Institute (CCSI).

Technical features

Mercury supports data archiving, data discovery through various search strategies (text string, fielded, spatial, temporal),

data reuse In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete values that convey information, describing quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted. ...

, and longer-term scientific digital data stewardship, and supports a range of recognized data exchange and

interoperability Interoperability is a characteristic of a product or system to work with other products or systems. While the term was initially defined for information technology or systems engineering services to allow for information exchange, a broader defi ...

protocols and supports various metadata standards including

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...

, Z39.50,

FGDC The Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) is a United States government committee which promotes the coordinated development, use, sharing, and dissemination of geospatial data on a national basis. Its 32 members are representatives from the E ...

, Dublin Core, Darwin Core, Ecological Metadata Language, and

ISO ISO is the most common abbreviation for the International Organization for Standardization. ISO or Iso may also refer to: Business and finance * Iso (supermarket), a chain of Danish supermarkets incorporated into the SuperBest chain in 2007 * Is ...

. Mercury also uses OAI-PMH to index metadata records from Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) and redistribute them other data providers

References

External links

USGS Science Data Catalog - powered by MercuryUSGS Mercury Metadata Editor
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mercury Metadata Clearinghouse Metadata Data management software United States Geological Survey United States Department of Energy Oak Ridge National Laboratory