Management, documentation, and resources for, metadata standards used by the British Antarctic Survey and UK Polar Data Centre.
This project aims to promote alignment and best practice across teams within BAS for producing consistent and high-quality metadata.
It consists of:
- an Issue Tracker 🛡️, used to discuss and agree the use of metadata standards, profiles and the development of any associated resources
- a Documentation Website, providing high-level information about these standards, profiles and resources
- a Resources Website for supporting resources to implement standards and profiles, including JSON schemas, XML stylesheets, sample files, etc.
Note
This project is focused on needs within the British Antarctic Survey. It has been open-sourced in case parts are of interest to others. Some resources, indicated with a '🛡' or '🔒' symbol, can only be accessed by BAS staff or project members respectively. Contact the Project Maintainer to request access.
Note
See the Documentation Website for existing licences and why they exist.
To add new licences:
- define the licence in
resources/licences/in the form:{licence}/index.html - wrap content in a
<pre>element to resemble a text file - reference the licence in
site/src/pages/resources/licences.md
Note
See the Documentation Website for existing media types and why they exist.
To add new media types:
- define the media type in
resources/media-types/in the form:{media-type}/{media-subtype}index.html - reference the licence in
site/src/pages/resources/media-types.md
Note
If registering a media type outside the established IANA top-level types (application, text, etc.), prefix it with
x-. E.g. resources/media-types/x-service/foo/index.html.
Each index.html file should:
- wrap content in a
<pre>element to resemble a text file - include a common preamble [1]
- define the local media type using a template based on those used in the IANA media types registry
Note
IANA registrations are known to be inconsistent over time. Our local registrations can similarly vary based on need
(for example the x-service series are more minimal).
[1] Common preamble for local media types:
This file represents a local media-type registration for use within the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).
It is not an official IANA media type as defined by: https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml
For more information see: https://metadata-standards.data.bas.ac.uk/resources/media-types#local-media-types
A pseudo media-type template follows.
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Any XML stylesheets should be defined in resources/xml-stylesheets/ within a directory.
Note
Browsers don't support loading stylesheets across origins. Therefore stylesheets will likely need to be copied to the origin the XML document will be served from, or reversed proxied to appear as though it is.
The Documentation Website uses a Flask based static site generator, with content written in Markdown.
Content stored in site/src/pages/ is built to site/build by the site/src/build.py script which uses:
- Frozen-Flask to capture a Flask site as static HTML
- Flask file routes within this app to render Markdown files as HTML
- pytailwindcss to generate Tailwind CSS styles
- a simple method to copy other static assets (favicons, etc.)
To build a preview the documentation site locally:
% cd site/
% uv run python src/build.py
% uv run python -m http.server 9000 --directory build
To debug the underlying Flask app locally:
% uv run flask --app src/app.py run --port 9000
Resources can be remotely hosted via S3. Separate buckets are provided for testing and production:
- Testing: metadata-resources-testing.data.bas.ac.uk
- Production: metadata-resources.data.bas.ac.uk
All items within these buckets are accessible publicly. All AWS resources are managed by Terraform.
Terraform resources are defined in provisioning/terraform/.
Access to the BAS AWS account 🛡️ is required to provision these resources. Docker and Docker Compose are recommended but not required for running Terraform.
$ cd provisioning/terraform
$ docker compose run terraform
$ terraform init
$ terraform ...State information for this project is stored remotely using a Backend.
Specifically the AWS S3 backend as part of the BAS Terraform Remote State 🛡️ project.
Remote state storage will be automatically initialised when running terraform init. Any changes to remote state will
be automatically saved to the remote backend, there is no need to push or pull changes.
Permission to read and/or write remote state information for this project is restricted to authorised users. Contact the BAS Web & Applications Team to request access.
See the BAS Terraform Remote State 🛡️ project for how these permissions to remote state are enforced.
Resources and the Documentation Website are synced to S3 using Continuous Deployment. Related external projects can contribute their own resources by provisioning an IAM user with suitable S3 permissions.
A Continuous Deployment process using GitLab's CI/CD platform is configured in .gitlab-ci.yml.
Mapping and Geographic Information Centre (MAGIC), British Antarctic Survey (BAS).
Project lead: @felnne.
A Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) does not apply to this project.
Copyright (c) 2018-2025 UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), British Antarctic Survey (BAS).
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.