Metadata is an important component of the data management life cycle for geospatial content. Organizations that create geospatial data can include metadata as a benefit to their own internal data management practices and to help users discover and understand relevant data online. This ‘metadata basics’ workshop will: (1) introduce and define geospatial metadata schemas and standards; (2) describe the internal and external benefits of metadata to organizations who create geospatial data; (3) illustrate how metadata impacts the online discovery experience for users; (4) discuss recommended data management practices including file naming, attribute field names and definitions, versioning, and controlled vocabularies; (5) provide advice and best practices for using ESRI’s ArcCatalog to author geospatial metadata; and (6) offer tips for publishing metadata in ESRI ArcGIS Hub (Open Data) sites.