The Marine Data Inventory maintained at OGS-NODC includes more than 280 Italian/Mediterranean marine datasets, collected by several Italian scientific laboratories. The inventory covers physical oceanography, chemical oceanography, biological oceanography, marine meteorology, hydrography, marine ecology and underwater acoustics. The data sets inventoried have been collected worldwide since the beginning of the century. Their description include: observed parameters, instruments, data processing, geographical area and time period, availability and co-ordinate of the centre and the contact person. They are referenced with their respective format (e.g. digital databases or files, analogue records, paper charts, hard-copy tabulations, biological samples, etc.).