Sabina Di Franco, Roberto Salzano, Enrico Boldrini and Rosamaria Salvatori

To share a collection of field-collected hyperspectral data of snow (Snow and Ice Spectral Library - SISpec), a metadata profile, specific to cryosphere properties was created to describe the dataset and increase interoperability. The spectral data were collected in Polar areas and were intended for analysing and processing multispectral satellite images to study the seasonal evolution of snow surface. The metadata profiles of various spectral libraries on rock, soils, and vegetation were examined. In the absence of specific standards for the cryosphere, the international classification of snow was adopted as a guideline (Fitz, 2009). To ensure compliance with the "open access" rules, we searched for a balance between the ERC guidelines, the FAIR principles defined by the Research Data Alliance, and the GEO Data Sharing Principles. The ISO 19115 standard and the INSPIRE guidelines were chosen as the standard framework to describe SISpec. When the available metadata schema was not sufficient or well-suited, metadata extensions or new detailed metadata components were created.