Geospatial Data Catalogs: Approaches by Academic Libraries

Identifying User Needs: A Case Study on Geospatial Data Requests at McGill University

“…A GIS data unit in an institution that implements the distributed GIS service model (Goldberg et al 2014) must deal with comparative issues such as • Collection development (Florance 2006;Erwin, Sweetkind-Singer, and Larsgaard 2009) • data organization (Lage 2007;Kollen et al 2013;Ahonen-Rainio 2006) • data dissemination (Herold, Gale, and Turner 1999;Boxall 2004Boxall , 2007Shawa 2006) • data promotion (Weimer, Olivares, and Bedenbaugh 2012;Bennett and Nicholson 2007) • user instruction (Jablonski 2004;Nazari and Webber 2011) and access assistance (Parrish 2006;French 2001).…”

Identifying Local Hidden Data Sets: The First Step to Begin a Geospatial Data Collection

“…Depending on what the data are, the library could also add it to its catalog. There are several examples of libraries who are doing this and using a variety of sources to do so (Kollen et al 2013). This is a simple but time-intensive process.…”

“…This word-of-mouth type of discovery is serendipitous, cumbersome, and unlikely. Libraries have begun to collect geospatial data, add metadata, and develop geospatial data catalogs to help researchers (Kollen et al 2013). Outside of academic institutions, at the federal and state level, groups have been developing and cultivating geospatial data collections for decades.…”

“…Libraries have been resources to help with these new and ongoing requirements from local institutional levels to national approaches (Kollen et al 2013). Data exist in many forms, from simple spreadsheets and transcriptions to more complex associated files and databases.…”

One store has all? - the backend story of managing geospatial information toward an easy discovery

“…These challenges include how to choose and create the cyberinfrastructure for the geoportal development; how to effectively organize the geospatial metadata and develop the data catalog to support the geoportal; how to manage the library's datasets; and the portal usability design. Many studies have explored different aspects of these challenges, such as the geospatial data catalog, metadata schema, portal federation, and usability (Kollen et al, 2013;Hardy and Durante, 2014;Florance et al, 2015;Blake et al, 2017). Among these challenges, my research interest is particularly focused on how to manage the ever increasing datasets in the library's environment, so that the information can be well organized and preserved to serve as a reliable node for the geoportal.…”