MOLES 3 Editor User Guide
This guide is a collection of notes on editing MOLES3 records with the new Django interface. The old MOLES2 guide is available here? .
You can go straight to the MOLES3 editor interface at: http://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/admin/ . Once logged in you can also use the "edit record" link on each record.
There are a short set of videos explaining various aspects of MOLES below for quick guides.
Further detailed notes are added from this page too. In particular there are lists of the questions to refer to when editing/creating MOLES3 content to ensure that the content conform to the NERC Metadata Guidelines where possible.
Overview of MOLES 3 structure
MOLES3 has the following principal components:
You can find the presentation put together for the MOLES3 evaluation here - useful for further background information and comparison with MOLES2.
MOLES2 -> MOLES3 and the archive
Having migrated from MOLES1->MOLES2 and finally to MOLES3 over the years, there is a need to review the MOLES3 content. In particular if the Observation level records are fit for purpose (i.e. really represent items in the archive). This video gives a quick example and a few suggestions about things to consider when carrying out a review of a dataset collection in MOLES3 and seeing if it truly matches what is in the archive.
The ideal that we should be aiming for is a set of Observations (datasets in the user view) that cover all of the CEDA archive holdings in a unique fashion - i.e. the files/resources (if physical data) covered by an observation should be:
- A cohesive set of data - i.e. they have common features, e.g. all from one instrument for a given campaign; from the same flight; from the same period (e.g. year). Bascically, they share a common set of answers to who, what, when, where, how.
- There is one point below which all the collection can then be found which provides the "download" point to connect to from the Observation
- If they were to be citable with a DOI the Observation makes a sensible landing page (though you can also add DOIs to an Observation Collection too, but this requires all members of the collection to be well defined -i.e. this is hard to accomplish!)
- They share the same security requirements - e.g. they are all open data or covered by the same access group and will change at the same time
Unfortunately, when we went from MOLES1->MOLES2 there was a proliferation of Deployment records created as a bunch of DPTs and Obs Station records were split off into different Deployments. Whilst some of that was amended in MOLES2 by aggregating some deployments together, lots were not and have been migrated over to Observations in MOLES3. In addition, the focus of MOLES2 was at the Data Entity level and often the Deployment level was left incomplete and things were further complicated by the Activity, DPT and Obs Station records also being points which connected to the archive.
MOLES3 breaks away from this by ONLY permitting Observations to connect to the archive.
When examining the archive, the CEDA archive structure model may be a useful point of reference.
Editing notes for MOLES3 content
| User view name | MOLES3 name | Link to video | Link to Metadata Guidelines | Note |
| Dataset | Observation | Video here | observation guidelines here | This is where to link to the archive and have the access application link. Link these to Project type of project records (not Programme) |
| Dataset Collection | Observation Collection | Video here | observation collection guidelines here | |
| Project | Project | Video here | project guidelines here | This can have Programme->Project->Field Campaign hierarchy. Link to projects not programme level records to Observation Collections |
| Instrument | Instrument | instrument guidelines here | ||
| Platform | Platform | platform guidelines here | ||
| Computation | Computation | computation guidelines here? | ||
| Composite Process | Composite Process | composite guidelines here? | ||
A Note About Adding DOIs
DOIs can be minted for Observation and Observation Collections. Instructions on minting DOIs are given on the DOI opman page
Helpful Hints & Tools
Here's a list of useful things to help speed up your MOLES editing:
- Need to edit a number of fields accross a number of similar records? Open them all up in seperate tabs in your browser.. then do one field for all the records at a time; then the next field for all opened records - this way you'll be more consistent and you'll not get caught weighting whilst saving after each edit.
- A couple of handy tools (for Chrome users):
| Tab Scissors | splits your browser into two side-by-side windows on the selected tab |
| Check my links | A quick way to check all the links (and highlights them too!) on your page aren't broken whist you work |
| Link Clump | A FAST way to open lots of links to pages you need to check - simply Click and drag selection of lots of link to open as a bunch of new tabs |
| Tab-sidebar | A handy way to keep track (and switch to!) of which tab is which when you've got lots open and so can't read their names anymore in Chrome|| |