'Marine metadata interoperability project: leading to collaboration

The marine metadata interoperability project is halfway through its first year of marine metadata and community development. In that time it has established Steering and Technical Committees, developed a collaborative Web site with many hundreds of references and an active membership, and initiated a domain vocabulary mapping project and demonstration development effort. We describe the project's international collaboration and results to date, and suggest that metadata is an admirable starting point for collaborations between other science projects.