Partners Providing Public Access
Focusing the Library’s Contribution

• Data library service
• identification
• storage
• documentation

• Service to GIS professionals
• search and retrieval of spatial metadata
• storage and distribution in "native" format data

• Technical assistance is key

• Data integration important

• Update of data cannot be ad hoc

• 10% of the data is used 90% of the time

• Need to meet the needs of the non-expert user

• Web-mapping becoming an essential component

• Integration of tabular and spatial data

• Agreements with data providers for update

• Standardized "base" themes

• Web-mapping application server
• Non-expert data viewing through a Web browser

• a store of day-to-day operational data
• a one-stop GIS shop

• Do GIS
• Provide data viewing capabilities
• Provide desktop GIS capabilities
• Provide fully functional GIS capability

• Metadata development

• Spatial data management

• Do a little of all the above

• Do nothing

• Coping with the volume of digital spatial data

• Few capabilities

• Limited resources

• Minimal expertise

• Providing data access

• Increasing patron’s expectations

• Basic nourishment? or
• Haute cuisine?

• Get out of the paper map business

• Build on the library’s strengths (and I am not suggesting full GIS services)

• Exploit Web-based GIS technologies

• "Desktop GIS" and a "Fully Functional GIS" are essentially the same

• Never-ending expense of GIS hardware and software

• Current cost of skilled GIS people
• B.S. - Over $40,000
• M.S. - Over $50,000
• Ph.D. - Over $100,000

• A basic purpose of a GIS is synthesizing data to create new information

• Librarians don’t write papers for patrons - why should you write a "spatial document?"

• Others are staffed and equipped to provide GIS services

• Put your resources where you can maximize the impact
• Data acquisition
• Cataloging (Metadata development)
• Customer service