ISO 19115:2013 "Geographic Information – Metadata"[1] from ISO/TC 211, the industry standard for geospatial metadata, describes its scope as follows: [This standard] provides information about the identification, the extent, the quality, the spatial and temporal aspects, the content, the spatial reference, the portrayal, distribution, and other properties of digital geographic data and services.
For example, NASA's "DIF" metadata format was developed during an Earth Science and Applications Data Systems Workshop in 1987,[3] and formally approved for adoption in 1988.
[6] ISO/TC 211 undertook the task of harmonizing the range of formal and de facto standards over the approximate period 1999–2002, resulting in the release of ISO 19115 "Geographic Information – Metadata" in 2003 and a subsequent revision in 2013.
The growth in popularity of Internet technologies and data formats, such as Extensible Markup Language (XML) during the 1990s led to the development of mechanisms for exchanging geographic metadata on the web.
ISO 19115 and its parts define how to describe geographical information and associated services, including contents, spatial-temporal purchases, data quality, access and rights to use.
By establishing a common set of metadata terminology, definitions and extension procedures, this standard promotes the proper use and effective retrieval of geographic data.
The metadata includes information about the identification, constraint, extent, quality, spatial and temporal reference, distribution, lineage, and maintenance of the digital geographic data-set.
For example, ESRI's ArcGIS Desktop, SOCET GXP, Autodesk's AutoCAD Map 3D 2008, Arcitecta's Mediaflux and Intergraph's GeoMedia support geospatial metadata extensively.
GIS Inventory is a free web-based tool that provides a very simple interface to create geospatial metadata.