NDSA:February 2012

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February 29, 2012 Meeting Notes

The Geospatial subgroup of the NDSA Content WG met via teleconference on Wed. Feb. 29. The call was a getting to know you session, with participants productively sharing their thoughts and expectations on the goals of the group. Co-leaders John Faundeen of the USGS and Brett Abrams of NARA shared a draft mission statement to open the discussion. This draft is up on the NDSA wiki at http://www.loc.gov/extranet/wiki/osi/ndiip/ndsa/index.php?title=Draft_Mission_Statement and is open for editing through March 15.

After sharing their expectations, the group discussed possible future activities. These potential actions are being shared and collected via email, and will be shared shortly on the NDSA wiki. More to come!

Future Group Agenda Topics

Higher Priority:

• Industry Outreach: Archives and Libraries act in conjunction with geospatial users in government to meet with ESRI and discuss need for published or open formats.

• Appraisal: Consider effort toward appraisal: particularly what kind of data needs to be preserved (raw, intermediate, or final stage, all, some)
• Spatial Data Infrastructure: Understanding the state GIS Clearinghouse relationship with local data providers and details regarding the data transfer between the two:

(a) acquisition of data (by the clearinghouse) on specific schedules; (b) data sharing agreements between the two entities; (c) definition of framework layers and those preserved vs. not preserved (appraisal process) in an eventual archive; (d) metadata and minimum documentation required by both clearinghouse and archive

• Proprietary vs. open formats (and ESRI). Recently, there was an interesting blog post about this very subject that had been floating around the web (with some interesting comments at the end!). It made its way to our campus GIS email lsitserv here at UW-Madison recently and folks were buzzing about it:

http://www.structuralknowledge.com/2012/02/03/why-esri-as-is-cant-be-part-of-the-open-government-movement/ We, of course, have our own issues with file geodatabases and how to deal with those in a preservation environment, etc.

• Rights and Access: Copyright and other issues surrounding 'Access Rights' to Geospatial

Data: (a) copyright, licensing and legal implications of language such as indemnification/hold harmless clauses in data distribution agreements; (b) administrative metadata for dealing with access rights (c) Costs/fees for obtaining local public geospatial data and implications for archiving (i.e. continually purchase new versions based on retention schedule?)

• File formats, naming conventions and best practices: (a) Export feature classes out of geodatabases and archive as shapefiles?; (b) re-name files for archiving purposes, but retain link (via database?) back to original file from original data producer?
• GeoMAPP did a ton of work in this area and we are sifting through all of that documentation now...but it might be interesting to hear about other's workflows.

Lower priority:

• Generate effort to find a location for geospatial data that a state or other kinds of archives cannot afford to maintain.

Topics exported from the GeoMAPP survey of full and informational partners

• Anything that helps us understand how to manage all kinds of electronic records
• Archiving GIS data, Geopspatial format issues, geospatial metadata for preservation and access.
• archiving GIS project data
• Archiving GIS project data and standards would be good topics.
• Archiving GIS project data;
• As noted: Engaging with local governments; Archiving GIS project data
• FDGC to ISO 19115 Metadata conversion- preservation impacts; Preservation strategy for geospatial data projects (source data, interim products, etc); Preservation in an ephemeral Web service based world
• I would be interested in Archiving Porject data and Engaing with local governments
• I would like more information on archiving GIS project data or working with the FDGC to ISO metadata shift.
• I would like to work with ensuring the work of the project is accessible through other venues like eXtension's Map@Syst community. Additionally, I have interest in how to ensure local governments are aware of the issues involved.
• Leveraging local government geospatial data sharing through state archiving serivces.
• Storage & Access; Infrastructure; Enabling Technologies
• These suggested potential topics sound great. I would also like to see more about moving from research and study toward implementation, ingesting, and consolidation of data stores.
• We have so far to go... the FGDC to ISO shift would interest us, as would the GIS archiving