About MarLIN

Dear MarLIN Users.

MarLIN has been in continuous use for the last 17 years and on the 1-st of August 2016 was superseded
by a new metadata system developed with the use of latest technology and offering more advanced features.
The old MarLIN has been put in READ-ONLY mode and will remain accessible and searchable for some time
but record editing is no longer possible.

Please follow this link to access the new metadata system: www.marlin.csiro.au.
Any feedback information will be very much appreciated.

General Information

MarLIN, the CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research Laboratories Information Network, stores information about data within the CSIRO Division of Marine and Atmospheric Research. The directory is accessible to CMAR staff and other users via a world wide web (WWW) interface for searching, although only CMAR staff can enter or modify individual dataset descriptions. If for any reason MarLIN is off-line, i.e. you receive a message "Please try again later" in response to a search or edit request, it is possible that we are either working on an aspect of the system, or that the running of the underlying Oracle database has been interrupted for some reason. If MarLIN data do not reappear after a reasonable interval (e.g. 1-2 hours), please notify us of any prolonged downtime in case we have not already become aware of the problem.

MarLIN entries include metadata elements which are compatible with the nationwide "Blue Pages" system (=Marine and Coastal Data Directory of Australia), and the recently released Metadata Guidelines of the Australia New Zealand Land Information Council [ANZLIC], as well as additional fields developed for internal Divisional use. MarLIN also incorporates subject categories based on those used by ASFA (Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts) and used by permission, and which are prefixed by the equivalent ASFA numeric codes.

MarLIN employs three primary technologies. The database is an Oracle 7 database running under UNIX on a Sun workstation. The data are made available to the HTTP server and the Java applet via the Oracle WEB Agent. The applet was written using Java and Sun's Java Workshop. MarLIN has been developed from the Environmental Data Directory ("Green Pages" application) at Environment Australia in Canberra, which was developed by the Environmental Resources Information Network and Computer Power Pty Ltd. Further development of the MarLIN interface and the underlying database structure have been carried out by the Divisional Data Centre, in particular by Tony Rees and Miroslaw Ryba. Paul Smith and Pamela Brodie also assisted with customisation of the JAVA search applet.

Initial MarLIN entries have been drawn from Data Centre holdings, previous CMAR "Blue Pages" listings, and other sources. Divisional staff will also be encouraged to contribute their own entries to the system as an ongoing activity.

MarLIN picklists and predefined options

MarLIN uses species codes developed for CAAB (Codes for Australian Aquatic Biota). These codes are maintained separately within the Division of Marine and Atmospheric Research for use Australia-wide. Examples of the codes as implemented in MarLIN are available as stand-alone www pages on the Data centre web site, as a searchable version of the CAAB full list (5500 species approx., grouped by CAAB major category).

Many input and search options in MarLIN are pre-formatted as picklists, which (where possible) have been developed or modified to suit CMAR needs. If you are interested in looking at the contents of these picklists independently of the MarLIN application (for example, to see if your needs will be sufficiently well served by items presently in the lists), you can open standalone versions of the following:

The MarLIN Subject Categories picklist
The MarLIN Habitat Keywords picklist
The MarLIN Taxonomic groups picklist
The MarLIN Parameters picklist
The MarLIN Equipment picklist
The MarLIN Data Formats picklist
The MarLIN Location Keywords picklist

An on-line references list is also accessible to Divisional staff, containing Divisional publication references from 1938 to mid 1997.

The following www pages or documents give additional information about MarLIN:

A paper describing MarLIN design features
Other data directories

return to MarLIN home page

This page last modified: 6 October 2006 (ajr)