This tutorial only shows the most basic functioning of ArcCatalog. For further information about ArcCatalog, go to Help - ArcGIS Desktop Help - Contents tab - ArcCatalog.

Starting ArcCatalog

• Start ArcCatalog by going to Start-Programs-ArcGIS-ArcCatalog

What you see in the catalog tree
The catalog tree on the right of the ArcCatalog program window looks similar to a standard Windows file manager view, but the ArcCatalog tree only shows data that can be read by ArcGIS.

• Navigate to the location of the GIS data - on the Sutton Lab computers, this should be c:\GIS_data
• Now open the city_of_austin folder within the GIS_data folder
• Click the cursor on the coa_parks.shp file. This is a data set from the City of Austin (COA) containing city parks.

A file ending in .shp is called shape file. This is a very common GIS data format, created by ESRI, the makers of ArcGIS. A shape file actually consists of several files (you will see this if you look at the GIS_data folder in a Windows file manager program - for airports, you would see coa_parks.shp, coa_parks.shx, coa_parks.dbf, coa_parks.sbm, coa_parks.prj, coa_parks.sbx, and coa_parks.shp.xml), all of which are necessary for this GIS data set to be readable in a GIS software program). That's one reason why ArcCatalog is a better program than Windows File Manager for managing GIS data. If you copy coa_parks.shp in ArcCatalog to another folder, the ArcCatalog program knows to copy all the associated data files with it.

Previewing geography

• With coa_parks.shp still highlighted (click on it with the cursor if necessary), click on the Preview tab above the right screen pane. You should see what the parks data layer actually looks like. At the bottom of the Preview pane, you should see a form item that says Preview: Geography:
• If it says Preview: Table, change it to Geography.
• Click on the Information tool () and then click on one of the park features. You will see the information stored in the attribute table about that park.
• Use the zoom and pan tools () to zoom in and out and pan around in the preview map.  With the zoom in tool (magnifying glass with a plus sign), you should use the mouse to draw a box around the area you want to zoom in to (click on one corner, keep the mouse button held down, and drag it to the opposite corner of the box before releasing). With the zoom-out tool, you also create a box - the current view will then be "zoomed out" to fit inside the box you created. With the pan tool, you hold down the mouse button while you pan any direction to move the map.
• To get back to the first (default) view, you can click on the world icon () - this takes you to the full extent of that particular data layer.

Previewing attribute tables

• You can preview the attribute table (table of associated tabular information for a GIS data layer) by going down the Preview form and choosing Table. This shows all the records in the GIS layer. Scroll down and across to see the entire table.

Reading metadata

• Metadata is data about data, that is, information about the data set. Click on the metadata tab for the coa_parks.shp file. When the metadata appears, you should see three more tabs - Description, Spatial, and Attributes.  The first tab, Description, has general information - click on any of the bold text to see more information (e.g., Status of the Data).
• While still in the metadata area, click on the Spatial tab - this gives you information about the coordinate system.
• Click on the attributes tab to see the list of attributes. Again, you can click on any of the bold text to see more information - if it exists! Many agencies and data creators do not document their data well or at all. The data developer should document each data set, but sometimes he/she does not do this, or it may not be documented very well.  Metadata is critical to data users - without it, you may not know what a particular data layer represents, when it was created, if it is complete, what the attributes mean, or what format it is in. We will discuss the importance of metadata more in class.
• Towards the top left portion of the ArcCatalog screen, you should see a form item for Stylesheet: FGDC ESRI. Click on this form and select FGDC
  
• You see the same information in a different format. FGDC stands for Federal Geographic Data Committee. This organization issues standards for metadata documentation for all Federal agencies producing GIS data. These standards have been widely adopted by states and local governments as well as many foreigh countries.  Because the metadata you are looking at is kept in a web-based database format (.xml format), it can be viewed in a number of ways. Experiment with looking at the same coa_parks metadata in different stylesheets.
• When you are done, please return to the FGDC ESRI stylesheet for the next person who uses the machine you are on.

Getting to know your data
Now use what you have learned to look at other data sets on the GIS_Data CD. Preview the maps and tables, and look at the metadata. Note that there are four additional data folders on the CD - Census, Hillshade, USGS Quadmap Reference, and Water_wastewater. Double-click on the folders to see the GIS data that they contain. In the folder for "GIS Tutorial Data" there are also two other folders. "ECT_Files" contain GIS fils for the Envision Central Texas project, covering the 5-county Austin metropolitan region. "Additional Data" are some files that we either created in-house or found useful for our classes.

For many of the data sets, you will see that there is no metadata. What questions do you have about the data sets that you cannot answer? How confident would you be using this data in an analysis report or a public meeting? What futher information would you like to have?

When you are done with your exploration, proceed to Creating a Map with ArcMap.