National Geospatial Digital Archive
Encyclopedia
The National Geospatial Digital Archive is an archive of cartographic information funded by the Library of Congress
, University of California Santa Barbara, and Stanford University
.
. Geospatial imagery is now a critical tool for state and federal researchers pursuing greater understandings of complex matters including disaster relief, census
data, and land use management
. Concerned that millions of nationally important digital information resources are in danger of being lost or corrupted, the Library of Congress formed The National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP).
As partners in the project the university libraries of UCSB and Stanford are leading the formation of the National Geospatial Digital Archive (NGDA), a collecting network for the archiving of geospatial images and data. They have partnered with eight institutions to begin a three year, $15 million effort to begin construction of a nationwide digital collection and preservation system.
ADL provides HTML clients to access its collections and gazetteer, and provides specific information management tools, such as the Feature Type Thesaurus for classing types of geographic features, as well as downloadable software code.
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
, University of California Santa Barbara, and Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
.
Introduction
From the first colonial maps to the satellite imagery of the 21st century, cartographic information has helped define and frame our view of the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Geospatial imagery is now a critical tool for state and federal researchers pursuing greater understandings of complex matters including disaster relief, census
Census
A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. It is a regularly occurring and official count of a particular population. The term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common...
data, and land use management
Land management
Land management is the process of managing the use and development of land resources. Land resources are used for a variety of purposes which may include organic agriculture, reforestation, water resource management and eco-tourism projects.-See also:*Sustainable land management*Acreage...
. Concerned that millions of nationally important digital information resources are in danger of being lost or corrupted, the Library of Congress formed The National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP).
As partners in the project the university libraries of UCSB and Stanford are leading the formation of the National Geospatial Digital Archive (NGDA), a collecting network for the archiving of geospatial images and data. They have partnered with eight institutions to begin a three year, $15 million effort to begin construction of a nationwide digital collection and preservation system.
Objectives
The objectives of the project are to:- Create a new national federated network committed to archiving geospatial imagery and data.
- Investigate the proper and optimal roles of such a federated archive, with consideration of distant (dark) backup and migration, directly serving content to users, vs. referring requestors back to the originators of the data for copies or assistance, active or passive quality/integrity monitoring, application of metadata, federated searching, dissemination of metadata, etc.
- Collect and archive major segments of at-risk digital geospatial data and images.
- Develop best practices for the presentation of archived digital geospatial data.
- Develop partner communication mechanisms for the project and then ongoing.
- Develop a series of policy agreements governing retention, rights management, obligations of partners, interoperability of systems, exchange of digital objects, etc.
History
This project is an outgrowth of the Alexandria Digital Library started in 1994. The Alexandria Digital Library (ADL) is a distributed digital library with collections of georeferenced materials. ADL includes the operational library, with various nodes and collections, and the research program through which digital library architectures, gazetteer applications, educational applications, and software components are modeled, prototyped, and evaluated.ADL provides HTML clients to access its collections and gazetteer, and provides specific information management tools, such as the Feature Type Thesaurus for classing types of geographic features, as well as downloadable software code.
See also
- Digital curationDigital curationDigital curation is the selection, preservation, maintenance, collection and archiving of digital assets.Digital curation is generally referred to the process of establishing and developing long term repositories of digital assets for current and future reference by researchers, scientists,...
- Digital libraryDigital libraryA digital library is a library in which collections are stored in digital formats and accessible by computers. The digital content may be stored locally, or accessed remotely via computer networks...
- Digital preservationDigital preservationDigital preservation is the set of processes, activities and management of digital information over time to ensure its long term accessibility. The goal of digital preservation is to preserve materials resulting from digital reformatting, and particularly information that is born-digital with no...
- Library of Congress Digital Library projectLibrary of Congress Digital Library projectThe Library of Congress National Digital Library Program is assembling a digital library of reproductions of primary source materials to support the study of the history and culture of the United States...
- National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation ProgramNational Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation ProgramThe National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program is an archival program led by the Library of Congress to archive and provide access to digital resources. The U.S. Congress established the program in 2000...
- Web archivingWeb archivingWeb archiving is the process of collecting portions of the World Wide Web and ensuring the collection is preserved in an archive, such as an archive site, for future researchers, historians, and the public. Due to the massive size of the Web, web archivists typically employ web crawlers for...
External links
- http://www.ngda.org
- http://www.alexandria.ucsb.edu
- The Library of Congress, Digital Collections and Programs
- The Library of Congress, Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program