Newsline from EDINA
June 2006: Volume 11, Issue 2
EDINA is pleased to announce new pricing for the coming academic year for two related services - CAB Abstracts and Land, Life & Leisure.
In addition, EDINA has made significant functional improvements to the services - Land, Life & Leisure has further extensive links to publishers' web sites, and CAB Abstracts has more flexible searching.
We invite existing sites to re-subscribe as well as welcoming new subscriptions. Thirty-day institutional trials are available for each service by contacting us
Digimap's Ordnance Survey Data Collection now includes OS Boundary Line data. This can be accessed under the Boundary Download tool and includes GB administrative boundaries in shape, mid/MIF and NTF file formats. GB grid outlines and national boundaries are also available here.
A new version of Carto, released recently to all registered users,now offers a fresh interface providing the full range of mapping datasets, including Land-Form PROFILE, 1:10,000 scale raster and 1:25,000 scale colour raster. The print interface has also been simplified and improved.
Both new and old versions of Carto will run in parallel until the end of June 2006. This should allow time for local documentation to be updated. Help pages are available now, and further help documents will be developed over the coming weeks. In particular please refer to the Frequently Asked Questions, which may answer many of the issues raised by first-time users of the new interface.
Feedback is welcome. We hope you find the new interface a useful improvement to the service.
agcensus, the EDINA service delivering grid square agricultural census data, is shortly due to receive an update of small area data for 2005 for England, Scotland, and Wales from the respective government departments.
On receipt, data processing and conversion will commence, with a view to having the grid square estimates available by the end of Summer 2006.
The Geospatial Repository for Academic Deposit and Extraction (GRADE) demonstrator interface has been re-designed in response to tester feedback over the last few months, making the interface easier to navigate and use.
Further functional improvements to the repository design will go ahead in the next few months. To view and register to use the new demonstrator please visit the GRADE Project web site (see web address below).
The GRADE project has also been investigating informal methods of geospatial data-sharing within the academic community. The GRADE team have created a questionnaire to assess how researchers share geospatial research data among themselves. The informal questionnaire was successfully piloted at the Nottingham GISRUK event and at Kingston University, with positive feedback and some really interesting results. The GRADE team are now seeking a wider audience. If you wish to participate and share your views, the questionnaire is now available to submit online from the GRADE home page.
EDINA is pleased to announce that UKBORDERS has successfully secured funding from ESRC for continuation of the service over the period 2006-2011. Significant service enhancements are planned, including training and outreach activities and greater Census Programme integration via a new Census Portal.
More details of planned developments will appear in the next issue of Newsline.