The Schema.org Datasets Schema: Experiences at the National Snow and Ice Data Center

Data discovery, is still a major challenge for many users. Relevant data may be located anywhere. There are currently no existing universal data registries. Often users start with a simple query through their web browser. But how do you get your data to actually show up near the top of the results?

One relatively new way to accomplish this is to use schema.org dataset markup in your data pages. Theoretically this provides web crawlers the additional information needed so that a query for data will preferentially return those pages that were marked up accordingly. The National Snow and Ice Data Center recently implemented an initial set of markup in the data set pages returned by its catalog. The Datasets data model, our process, challenges encountered and results will be described.