To make the task easier, Mercury staff have developed the ORNL Metadata Editor. The Metadata Editor creates files with the format and codes automatically included. The researcher only needs to add the metadata. Back to Top Mercury Is Based on Internet Standards Mercury's core software works with these non-proprietary Internet standards. Back to Top Mercury Supports Metadata Standards Metadata are data about data.
Metadata tell the who, what, when, where, and how of data collected or generated by a researcher.
However, most Mercury customers will take advantage of one of Mercury's built-in metadata standards as a starting point for their project metadata. A metadata standard is a list of metadata elements agreed to by a community of users. These standards allow metadata from many different sources to be searched for similar information. Each of these standards have an implementation using the Z39.50 protocol. As a result, queries based on one of the standards above can be sent over the Internet, simultaneously, to dozens of systems that comply with the standard.