Michael Haarman
DDI Tools: The MN perspective

mhaarma@socsci.umn.edu

The National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS) is a major NSF-funded social science infrastructure project underway at the University of Minnesota. By design it is being built upon the DDI metadata standard, and due to the size and complexity of the project we are confronted with a number of challenges likely faced by others attempting to implement the DDI. This presentation will offer an overview of some of the common XML development tools being used on the NHGIS project and links to downloads and further information. A brief introduction to the standard mechanisms for putting the extensibility into extensible markup will enable those commencing a project using the DDI to visualize the end-to-end architecture of such systems.

Michael Haarman
Minnesota Population Center
537 Heller Hall,
West Bank, University of Minnesota,
Minneapolis, MN 55455