Curating Virtual Data Collections

NASAs Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) contains a rich set of datasets and related services throughout its many elements. As a result, locating all the EOSDIS data and related resources relevant to particular science theme can be daunting. This is largely because EOSDIS data's organizing principle is affected more by the way they are produced than around the expected end use. Virtual collections oriented around science themes can overcome this by presenting collections of data and related resources that are organized around the user's interest, not around the way the data were produced. Virtual collections consist of annotated web addresses (URLs) that point to data and related resource addresses, thus avoiding the need to copy all of the relevant data to a single place. These URL addresses can be consumed by a variety of clients, ranging from basic URL downloaders (wget, curl) and web browsers to sophisticated data analysis programs such as the Integrated Data Viewer.