GISC Seminar: Towards Uncharted Ground

1. North Carolina Partnership with Library of Congress on Long-term Preservation of Digital Geospatial DataSteve MorrisNorth Carolina State University Libraries GISC Seminar: Towards Uncharted Ground September 29, 2006

2. NC Geospatial Data Archiving Project (NCGDAP) • Partnership between university library (NCSU) and state agency (NCCGIA), with Library of Congress as part of the National Digital Information Infrastructure & Preservation Program (NDIIPP) • One of 8 initial NDIIPP partnerships • Focus on state and local geospatial content in North Carolina (statedemonstration) • Tied to NC OneMap initiative, which provides for seamless access to data, metadata, and inventories • Objective: engage existing state/federal geospatial data infrastructures in preservation Serve as catalyst for discussion within industry

3. Today’s state/local data as tomorrow’s cultural heritage Future uses of data are difficult to anticipate (as with Sanborn Maps).

4. NC Spatial Data Infrastructure: NCOneMap NC OneMap is a next generation mechanism to coordinate and disseminate geographic information in North Carolina and interact with the NSDI. Objectives: • Build a common understanding of North Carolina data resources • Enable widespread access and distribution of geospatial data

5. NC OneMap Objectives (cont.): • Develop ongoing data inventory for all geospatial data holdings RAMONA – http://nc.gisinventory.net • Develop content standards for key data themes NC Geographic Information Coordinating Council (GICC) One of the defined characteristics of NC OneMap is that “Historic and temporal data will be maintained and available”.

6. NC OneMap Viewer (integrated WMS services)

7. Different Ways to Approach Preservation • Technical solutions: How do we archive acquired content over the long term? • Ingest processes • Repository architecture • Metadata processing • Format strategies • Cultural/Organizational solutions: How do we make the data more preservable—and more prone to be archived—from point of production? • Industry outreach and engagement • Inform standards development processes and best practices • Evolve geospatial data marketplace and software landscape • Socialization of the preservation problem

8. Project Technical Approaches • Receive data as is – variety of distribution methods • Migration of some at-risk formats • Metadata remediation, standardization, and synchronization • Distilling complex objects into repository ingest items (not easy) • Using DSpace for demonstration purposes • In the development: use METS record as dormant item “brain” within the repository Some unsustainable activities – for learning experience

9. Challenge: Data Formats • No widely-supported, open vector formats • Spatial Data Transfer Standard (SDTS) not widely supported • Geography Markup Language (GML) – diversity of application schemas and profiles threatens permanent access • “Open” does not necessarily imply “permanent access” • Spatial Databases • The whole is more than the sum of the parts, and the sum is very difficult to preserve • Can export individual data layers for curation • Some thinking of using the spatial database as the primary archival platform

10. Challenge: Cartographic Representation Counterpart to the map is not just the dataset but also models, symbolization, classification, annotation, etc.

11. Challenge: Geospatial Web Services • How to capture records from decision- • making processes? • Possible: Atlas collections from automated • image capture • Web 2.0 and AJAX impact: Emerging tiling • and caching schemes (archive tiles?)

12. Leveraging Existing Spatial Data Infrastructure • Metadata outreach and best practices • Content standards and practices • Regional partnerships • Emerging content exchange networks • Data sharing agreements • Personal and organizational relationships • Existing committee structures and meeting venues Key: Address business problems that are more compelling than archiving on its own (e.g., business continuity, disaster preparedness)

13. Challenge: Coordinated Content Transfer • Recent survey: over 20 state agencies plus federal agencies request local data • “Contact fatigue”: local governments being swamped by requests – data transfers are non-trivial • Need to allow one data snapshot to be accessible by multiple agencies – what snapshot frequency? • Stakeholder groups working to develop a plan for local-to-state data sharing on a regular basis • Business cases that are more compelling than archiving can put the data in motion (disaster preparedness, business continuity, roads, etc.)

14. Engaging Geospatial Industry • Software vendors • Meetings with ESRI development teams (Geodatabase, etc.) • Anticipating customer needs for temporal data management • Standards organizations • Presentations to Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Technical Committee in Nov. ’05 and Oct. ’06 (next week) • Points of intersection: GML for archiving, GeoDRM, content packaging, metadata, routinized content transfers, more … • Data Vendors • Cultivating a market for older data • Consulting Firms

15. Cultivating a commercial market for older data. Project Status Part of “permanent access” is marketing, advertising, and putting information into the path of the user

16. Questions? Steve Morris Head, Digital Library Initiatives NCSU Libraries Ph: (919) 515-1361 Steven_Morris@ncsu.edu http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/ncgdap