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  Mail Stop 954, National Center
  U.S. Geological Survey
  Reston, VA 20192

  Tel: (703) 648-6533
  FAX: (703) 648-6252
  email: pschweitzer@usgs.gov
  PGP public key
  LC Control # n 93054925

Education

• B.S. Geology, 1979, University of Maryland, College Park MD
• M.S. Geology, 1986, University of Kansas, Lawrence KS
• Ph.D. Oceanography, 1989, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution/Massachusetts Institute of Technology Joint Program in Oceanography, Woods Hole MA (Thesis: Inference of ecology from the ontogeny of microfossils)

About my job

• Current position description
• Previous position description
• Goals for data management in the Geologic Division
• Customer support rules worth following
• Presentations

Professional interests

• Controlled vocabularies for indexing, browsing, and search information resources
• Formal metadata, documentation of digital geospatial data that enables people to locate and evaluate data products.
• Scientific data communication, especially dealing with several common platforms and customers with varied interests.
• Popularizing data produced by U.S. government scientists, by developing software that enables people to use the data.
• Paleobiology, specifically thinking about ontogeny and ecology when considering evolutionary and paleoenvironmental problems.

Recent products

• National Spatial Data Clearinghouse: The real story
• A cataloging system for scientific information
• Putting Metadata in Plain Language
  GIS World September 1998; volume 11, number 9, pages 56-59
• Modern Average Global Sea-Surface Temperature
  U.S. Geological Survey Digital Data Series DDS-10
• Monthly Average Polar Sea-Ice Concentration
  U.S. Geological Survey Digital Data Series DDS-27
• ANALOG: A program for estimating paleoclimate parameters using the method of modern analogs
  USGS Open-File Report 94-645
• Xed, programmer's text editor (provisional)
  Designed for use on Unix systems with X11.
• mp: A compiler for formal metadata (provisional)
  Parses formal metadata, checking syntax in detail, and generates text, two forms of HTML, SGML, XML, and DIF. Includes source code and executables for Unix and Microsoft Windows (95 and up).
• Xtme: An editor for formal metadata (provisional)
  For UNIX systems running the X Window System. This program creates formal metadata in the format expected by the compiler above. Includes source code for Unix, executables for Linux and Solaris.
• Tkme: Another editor for formal metadata (provisional)
  Expanding the capabilities of Xtme and using Tcl/Tk for its GUI, this metadata editor allows users to create fully general FGDC metadata on both Microsoft Windows systems (95, 98, NT, 2000) and Unix or Linux computers running the X Window System.
• mq: A Tcl interface to query formal metadata (provisional)
  The powerful Tcl scripting language can be used to automate many complex tasks in managing metadata files, parsing records and extracting and manipulating fields within the hierarchical structure of the metadata. Requires Tcl 8.0 or later.
• DBFmeta: A tool to help document DBF files (provisional)
  This is a software tool designed to facilitate the documentation of data contained in DBF files. These data files are increasingly common because they are used to store attributes of geographic features in shapefiles used and produced by ESRI products.

Older products

Some photos:

• Sippewissett Marsh, Massachusetts (Cape Cod)
  • Mudflat: primary sampling site for my Ph.D. research [Winter] [Summer]
  • Pond: secondary sampling site [Winter] [Summer]
  • Wider view of the marsh showing seasonal changes in vegetation [Winter] [Summer]
• Two varieties of the ostracode species Cyprideis salebrosa
  • Sippewissett Marsh, Massachusetts
    • Female
    • Male
  • Scots Bay, Nova Scotia
    • Female
    • Male
• Seasonal changes in abundance of four sympatric species of Cyprideis in Sippewissett Marsh, Massachusetts (PDF).