Panel: Issues Related to GIS Portals (e.g., NEMO, Long Island, Oceans, etc.) vs. GIS Clearinghouses

6/07/07 Moderated by Maurie Caitlin Kelly

Greg Bonynge: University of Rhode Island

• Presented, “A Brief Introduction to Clearinghouses & Portals for Geospatial Data Networks”
• Rhode Island GIS (RIGIS): http://www.edc.uri.edu/rigis/
• National Geospatial Technology Extension Network (NGTEN)
• Clearinghouses:
• Distributors of geospatial data and information
• Host the content they distribute
• Range from small (conservation organization’s GIS database) to large (state GIS clearinghouse)
• Often distribute a collection contributed by many partner organizations
• Portal and clearinghouse policies and standards vary widely
• Need to efficiently find clearinghouses (keyword search, word of mouth)
• Portals (e.g., Geodata.gov):
• Source that links to a clearinghouse (or a site with data and/or information)
• Save user time by collecting records of where data are stored, and putting the records into a catalog to search
• Conservation GeoPortal by the Conservation Commons (http://www.conservationmaps.org/index.jsp)
• Portal content varies by geography, media type, content topics, and searching capabilities
• Portals have challenges:
• Quality control
• Technology (can be simple or complex)
• Value of portal dependant on breadth and quality of content contributors
• Portals do not take data ownership from others, the owners stay the owners

T. Wangyal Shawa: Princeton University

• Presented, “Services, Collection Development, and Dissemination Methods”
• GIS in libraries can be classified into two categories:
• Basic GIS service
• General access to GIS data on CDs
• Links to online datasets
• Access to GIS software packages
• Advance/In-Depth GIS consultation service
• GIS reference service
• Data searching
• Data conversion
• GIS analysis
• Mapping
• Etc.
• Princeton University provides in-depth consultation service; provide workshops, help patrons with analysis, conduct one-on-one meetings
• Collection Development:
• Each institute has own collection development policy
• Digital map and geospatial data are different—need to learn how to develop the collections
• At Princeton, most disciplines use geospatial or location-based data
• Core-data, base-data, or reference-data are GIS data that are needed most by GIS users to create their own data
• Coverage at Princeton is at the world level
• Global Mapping Industries: Christian group, have language data
• Dissemination Method:
• How to give access to data and maps that were purchased, donated, or received through the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP)
• How to design a system that will allow the library to integrate different forms of geographic information and make them accessible online from the interface
• How to help researchers who are in the field and want to access data online, and store and share data with their groups
• Princeton users Spatial Direct/FME
• They are using ArcSDE and Microsoft SQL server software to test project that will allow researchers to access, store, and create metadata, and share the data with fellow researchers
• Within each group, someone will become the administrator and have full access to the database, while others in the group will only be able to view
• He has started a pilot project with three groups
• Challenges of introducing a service:
• Convincing administration and researchers
• Storage and back-up space issues
• Work with system administrator
• Writing Memorandum of Understand (MOU) letters

Mark Becker: CIESIN

• Presented, “Geospatial Data Portals Licensing, Use, and Re-distribution”
• http://beta.sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/wdc (World Data Center)
• They build datasets themselves
• Developed Gridded Population of the World (from Census Data to vector to raster database)
• Building a Web mapping service: Ionic Red Spyder Software
• Another CIESIN Portal: http://nin.nbii.gov/portal/server.pt
• Northeast Information Node (NIN)
• They are working very hard to integrate different resources
• Invasive Plant Atlas of New England (IPANE) from the University of Connecticut is a NIN partner: http://www.conservationmaps.org/index.jsp
• Goals related to rights management
• Support re-distribution, re-use data
• Create happy users
• Data licensing issues
• Time consuming
• Confusing language
• Difficult to track/maintain records
• Separate from the data
• Not really machine-readable
• Have many permissions issues
• Creative Commons: www.creativecommons.com (CC)
• Machine-readable
• CIESIN is using CC licensing
• Now adding CC license to maps they create and disseminate
• Efforts to promote access to data through open journals and journals devoted to data
• Efforts to create science commons
• Creative Commons, Science Commons project: http://sciencecommons.org
• CODATA—Global Information Commons for Science Initiative: http://www.codata.org/wsis/GlobalInfoCommonsInitiative.html

Harvey Simon: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 2

• At Friday’s tour, they will do demos on how they handle data in ArcSDE
• Few examples to help with metadata
• EPA Metadata Editor Version 2
• National Park Services metadata tool set
• ArcScript
• http://geodata.epa.gov/tools.html