We're proud to announce the release of GeoNetwork opensource v2.6.0. This is a major release for the project that provides great new functionality, helping all those that need to publish their geographic data and services with standardized metadata.

You can find the software at https://sourceforge.net/projects/geonetwork/

This release includes the following new or improved functionality:

- Performance improvements on search and indexing
- INSPIRE Search panel and metadata view
- New embedded Web Map Viewer based on OpenLayers
- Multilingual metadata display and editing support for the ISO19115/19119/19110 metadata standards (encoding based on ISO19139)
- Keywords and Coordinate Reference System selection panels
- Advanced data and metadata export
- Metadata relations management (Parent/child metadata, related service metadata, related feature catalogues)
- Advanced schema and schematron validation of metadata with reporting improvements
- Visual warnings in the metadata editor
and many more...

GeoNetwork opensource ( http://geonetwork-opensource.org ) is a standards based geospatial catalog application that helps people and organizations to organize and publish their geospatial data through the web. It is currently used in numerous Spatial Data Infrastructure initiatives across the world.

The software provides an easy to use web interface to search geospatial data across multiple catalogs, combine distributed map services in the embedded map viewer, publish geospatial data using the online metadata editing tools and optionally the embedded GeoServer map server. Administrators have the option to manage user and group accounts, configure the server through web based and desktop utilities and schedule metadata harvesting from other catalogs.

You will find support for a number of metadata formats (ISO19115/19119 following ISO19139, FGDC and Dublin Core), a number of catalog interfaces (OGC-CSW2.0.2 ISO profile client and server, OAI-PMH client and server, GeoRSS server, GEO OpenSearch server, WebDAV harvesting, GeoNetwork to GeoNetwork harvesting support).

A single, platform independent installer allows to install and run the software on a PC or a server on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. The installer can be downloaded as an executable Windows file or as a platform independent .jar installer. It creates a Start menu on Windows computers. Command line installations are also possible for remote installations. Please refer to the manual for detailed installation instructions.

The GeoNetwork community has been expanding quickly over the last years. The current release has been possible because of all those that contributed to the project through code contributions, testing, bug reports and fixes as well as many suggestions.

GeoNetwork opensource is part of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo, http://www.osgeo.org) software stack, providing software you can trust tobe free, open and sustainable. Voluntary support is provided through mailing lists, websites and online forums.
Several companies also provide commercial support to help organizations to implement, integrate and maintain the software. You can find them in the Service Provider directory on the OSGeo website.

Thanks and congratulations to the all community members!
Jeroen Ticheler

ps. A preliminary version 2.6.0 has been available on SourceForge.net over the last week. That version has been replaced with a new one with two additional fixes. The version number of the new installer is 2.6.0-1 instead of 2.6.0-0