MarLIN Home Page




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MarLIN has been in continuous use for the last 17 years and on the 1-st of August 2016 was superseded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.




 
Welcome to MarLIN - the CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research (CMAR) Laboratories Information Network.

Please use the blue buttons under the MarLIN logo to navigate through MarLIN. Search allows the user a choice of ways to search the database using criteria such as geographic location, time period, subject category, keywords, etc., or to list titles in the database according to various options. Edit allows CMAR staff to enter new records or update existing ones. Help provides access to "help" pages with a topics list. About gives some background information about MarLIN. Home brings the user back to this page.

MarLIN concept

MarLIN is the searchable metadatabase (directory of datasets) for data held by the CSIRO Division of Marine and Atmospheric Research (CMAR). It is an initiative of the Divisional Data Centre. MarLIN is designed to hold descriptions of datasets collected by, or currently held within, the CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research plus its predecessors (Divisions of Marine Research, Atmospheric Research, Fisheries, Oceanography, and Fisheries & Oceanography). MarLIN also provides details of, or on-line links to, supporting information such as documentation, images, WWW sites with further information, and the data itself where this is available for delivery over the world wide web. This WWW MarLIN interface is accessible on the world wide web without restriction, but visibility of MarLIN entries depends on your access point. Divisional staff on the CSIRO computer domain can retrieve both "internal" and "external" records, while external enquirers can see only entries considered suitable for external release. In practice, the only "internal" records in MarLIN either comprise "in confidence" information, or datasets for which we are not the principal custodian or access point (i.e., datasets acquired from other agencies for use within CMAR).

Metadata in MarLIN

Metadata (specific attributes for each dataset) are stored in a standard format within the MarLIN database, which includes fields such as dataset title, abstract, geographic location, time period, subject category(s), search words, data quality, location and access constraints, documentation, contact details, etc. A comprehensive search interface allows searching on many permutations of these fields. Many of these fields follow a common format with the nationwide "Blue Pages" metadata directory for marine and coastal datasets of Australia, as well as the ANZLIC metadata standard for Australian and New Zealand dataset descriptions. Other fields such as MarLIN subject category, species taxonomic codes, voyage descriptions and on-line voyage tracks, among others, have been newly developed for MarLIN. You can see some sample dataset descriptions in MarLIN by clicking here.

MarLIN content

As at August 2011, MarLIN contains descriptions of over 3,600 Divisionally-held datasets, and is in the process of being populated further. All open-access (externally viewable) dataset descriptions from MarLIN are now also accessible via the nationwide Australian Spatial Data Directory (ASDD), although please note, this latter system incorporates only a subset of the full MarLIN functionality for searching, and also cannot retrieve "CMAR-only" (intranet) dataset descriptions.

The MarLIN website and application is maintained by Tony Rees with technical support and development by Miroslaw Ryba. Please e-mail any general questions to marlin@marine.csiro.au

This page last modified: 4 August 2011 (ajr)

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