UK GEMINI

Why is discovery metadata important? Data can only be useful, and used, if it can be found.

Why is a metadata standard important? Publishing your metadata in a recognised standard inspires trust, enables new services, and opens up international opportunities. See for example the UK government’s guidance on using metadata to describe data shared within government

“GEMINI” is the UK geographic metadata standard. It provides guidance on how to publish geographic metadata in a way that conforms to UK government guidelines and the relevant ISO standards.

AGI UK Gemini

UK GEMINI (Geo-spatial Metadata Interoperability Initiative) is a set of metadata elements for describing geospatial data resources. It is provided free of charge by the AGI for the benefit of the GI community, under a Creative Commons license.  The current version (Gemini 2.3) is maintained by AGI's GEMINI Working Group on GitHub and is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence

If you're thinking, "why GEMINI? Why not just use the INSPIRE Metadata guidance or the ISO standards?" Click here for some reasons.

UK GEMINI 2.3

The AGI Standards Committee published version 2.3 of UK GEMINI in June 2018.

GEMINI 2.3

This revision incorporated material prepared by the UK Location Programme, previously published at data.gov.uk, and material previously published as separate guidance documents. We hope this consolidation will make it easier for you to use. GEMINI was also updated for change requests from revised INSPIRE guidance and UK users.  The AGI is grateful to Defra for funding part of this work, and for several AGI members also contributing.

GEMINI 2.3 does not include any changes related to the publication of ISO 19115-1:2014; GEMINI remains based on ISO 19115:2003.

The existing guidelines on the quality of metadata still apply: Guidelines for UK GEMINI Part 3 Metadata Quality

MEDIN and Astun Technology have written case studies on their experiences implementing GEMINI 2.3:

Previous version: 2.2,  published December 2012

Version 2.2 of UK GEMINI2 included changes requested by the UK Location Programme Metadata Working Group resulting from the implementation of the national geospatial metadata service.

The data.gov.uk system continues to accept GEMINI 2.2 records encoded according to UK Location guidance.

  • UK GEMINI Standard v2.2
  • Guidelines for UK GEMINI Part 1 Introduction, which covers the basics of metadata
  • Guidelines for UK GEMINI Part 2 Creating Metadata using UK GEMINI, which provides a set of detailed guidelines for compiling UK GEMINI metadata elements.
  • Guidelines for UK GEMINI Part 3 Metadata Quality, which deals with metadata quality and covers quality evaluation and quality management of metadata including guidance on establishing acceptable quality levels.

Comments on UK GEMINI including suggestions for further developments, or on the Guidelines, may be submitted by email.