The main reason to document data is to maintain an organization's investment in its geospatial data. Organizations that do not document their data often find that, over time or because of personnel changes, they no longer know the content or quality of their data. Organizations then cannot trust the results generated from the data in which they have invested their time and resources. In addition, the lack of information about other organizations' data often leads to a needless duplicating of effort.

The major uses of meta data are:

• To help organize and maintain an organization's internal investment in spatial data,
• To provide information about an organization's data holdings to data catalogues, clearinghouses, and brokerages, and
• To provide information to process and interpret data received through a transfer from an external source.

The prototype NYS GIS Spatial Data Clearinghouse (http://www.ctg.albany.edu/gisny.html) employed the FGDC Meta Data Content Standard as the foundation for discovering and exchanging GIS datasets in New York State. While the federal standard may be refined and/or further defined by New York State, it is anticipated that a NYS standard will closely follow the structure of the federal standard.