Distributed Geolibraries Spatial Information Resources, Summary of a Workshop (1999) / Chapter Skim
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2 A Vision for Distributed Geolibraries
2 A Vision for Distributed Geolibraries
Pages 15-34
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From page 15... ...
Software has grown more sophisticated, empowering individuals with little technical training to make effective use of computers in ways that would have been inconceivable 25 years ago. Developments in wireless communications allow networked access virtually anywhere.
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From page 16... ...
Several factors help explain the high level of interest in the Internet and WWW as technologies for disseminating these particular types of information and related services. First, the methods of storage and dissemination of traditional productspaper maps, atlases, and photographic images-are cumbersome in comparison to digital data products and often require special cabinets and awkwardly shaped shipping packages.
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From page 17... ...
The Workshop on Distributed Geolibrar~es: Spatial Information Resources was designed to explore long-term visions of how ongoing activities may evolve, to explore possible development strategies, and to identify common needs (see Finding 21. Workshop participants were selected to represent a number of communities with interests in these issues: 'The workshop (and this report)
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From page 18... ...
Finding 2 Although many projects currently exhibit elements of the vision of distributed aeolibraries. the lack of a clear statement of that vision impedes coordination and leads to duplication of effort.
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From page 19... ...
If a library exists to serve a community, its first responsibility should be to provide the information needed by the community. How important is geospatial information about the community itself, produced perhaps within the community, compared to information about areas outside the community perhaps produced by others?
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From page 20... ...
In a traditional library the various stages of putting useful information into the hands of users occur largely in one place, in the physical structure known as the library. Books arrive in an acquisitions department; they are cataloged by specialists employed by the library in a cataloging department, placed on shelves within the library in locations designed to make it easy for patrons to browse through holdings on similar topics, retrieved by librarians and users, and signed out of the library at the circulation desk operated by a circulation department.
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From page 21... ...
Traditionally, libraries have made a clear distinction between general and special collections, using the latter term to refer to assets that need special treatment or that are unique in some way to a particular library, such as the papers of a particular literary or scientific figure. Maps and images fonn special collections in many libraries, in part because they are difficult to handle and in part because much of the collection may be unique.
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From page 22... ...
Finally, it includes information about the atmosphere above the surface, the geology below the surface, and the oceans that cover two-thirds of the planet's surface. All of these information assets are characterized by having some form of associated geographiciootprint, a boundary defining
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From page 23... ...
Just as author, subject, and title are ways of funding information assets in a traditional library, so the footprint of geoinformation gives the library the ability to identify all those assets that fit a given geographic query. For example, if information assets in the library had a footprint, it would be possible to identify those assets relevant to a user wanting information on the state of Missouri, or the Caspian Sea, by determining whether the footprint of the asset matched the footprint of the query in whole or in part.
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From page 24... ...
Instead, map libraries and other stores of geoinformation have had to maintain expensive and highly trained staffs to help users navigate through their information resources, and users have had to look to numerous sources to meet their geoinformation needs. Users of geoinformation were often highly trained experts, knowledgeable about sources, data quality, acronyms, and other tools of the geoinformation trade.
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From page 25... ...
ne way to think about a geolibrary (in a world of paper documents) is to imagine walking into a library building and being confronted not with a card catalog, or its modern digital equivalent, but with a giant physical globe.
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From page 26... ...
It is possible to present the digital library user with a picture of a globe; search for locations by name, address, or any other suitable and convenient method; allow repositioning and zooming; search distributed archives for information assets whose footprints match the query, present them to the user in sufficient detail to permit evaluation; and deliver them for further examination and analysis. But although a geolibrary is possible in principle, there are countless technical, practical, economic, and institutional problems that will have to be overcome.
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From page 27... ...
27 the combination of the two technologies falls far short of the services of a distributed geolibrary: The WWW does not have an equivalent of the library's carefully constructed catalog of assets. Search services such as AltaVista, Yahoo, and eBLAST that substitute for the services of a WWW catalog are crude imitations of the sophisticated skills of information abstraction possessed by the professional librarian.
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From page 28... ...
In other words, a distributed geolibrary would constitute a level of services above those provided by the Internet and the WWW, geared to specific user needs. Distributed geolibrary services offer the potential for more intelligent organization and access, for the creation of new knowledge through analysis of raw data, and for the solution of practical problems.
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From page 29... ...
· Advances in digital technology were making it possible to integrate and analyze geospatial data and support decisions in more powerful ways. The Mapping Science Committee's report Toward a Coordinated Spatial Data Infrastructure for the Nation (National Research Council, 1993)
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From page 30... ...
was the first of several network-based technologies that rapidly changed the nature of geospatial data dissemination over the next few years. Today, applications on the WOW have grown into an enormously successful tool, and have had a profound impact on the entire environment for geoinformation acquisition (National Academy of Public Administration, 19981.
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From page 31... ...
With the rise of decentralized technologies used across wide geographical distance, both the need for common standards and the need for situated, tailorable and flexible technologies grow stronger." Their defining dimensions of infrastructure provide useful guidance to the development of distributed geolibraries: they would be embedded in other structures, social arrangements, and technologies; their reach or scope would extend beyond a single site or practice; their procedures would be learned as part of membership of an organization or group; they would be linked with conventions or practice of day-to-day work; they would be the embodiment of standards and would build upon an installed base; and they would be visible on breakdown, since we would be most aware of them when they failed to work.
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From page 32... ...
Using the system's voice recognition capabilities, she is able to request information on land cover, distribution of plant and animal species, real-time weather, roads, political boundaries, and population. She can also visualize the environmental information that she and other students all over the world have collected as part of the GLOBE project.
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From page 33... ...
Like distributed geolibraries, Digital Earth is about making use of the vast but uncoordinated masses of geoinformation now becoming available via the Internet and about presenting it in a form that is readily accessible to the general user. Like distributed geolibraries, its central metaphor for the organization of information is the surface of the Earth and place as a key to information access.
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From page 34... ...
The library service mode} that underlies the concept of distributed geolibraries provides a useful way of structuring discussion and of thinking about the resources and research that will be needed to make the vision a reality. Chapter 3 discusses some of the societal and institutional challenges to realizing distributed geolibraries.
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