EDINA newsline
June 2007: Volume 12 Issue 2
GRADE, a JISC-funded, EDINA-led project investigating the cultural and technical issues of geospatial data sharing via repository architectures, concluded at the end of April.
The main findings of the project were outlined in the previous issue of Newsline (12.1). These findings are timely when one considers the 387,000 data downloads from the Digimap Ordnance Survey Collection for September 2006 to mid-April 2007, and the findings of a recent Digimap user questionnaire where 40% of the 570 respondents indicated they had created new data by adding to data downloaded from Digimap. This shows that there is much derived geospatial data that could be made available for reuse.
As part of the GRADE project, an audit of existing Institutional Repositories (IRs) was undertaken which confirmed that they do not currently manage geospatial data. Many IRs are dealing with publication outputs only, and not data. However the audit did suggest that if offered geospatial data, IR administrators would be willing to consider managing it, although it would probably be treated as any other data, not taking account of the special aspects of geo-data.
A further welcome outcome of the GRADE project has been the high level of activity generated by the demonstrator repository. The repository has over 140 datasets, over 100 registered users and over 90 refused requests for access (to comply with licence conditions, the demonstrator is only available to current Digimap users). This confirms project survey findings that there is strong community support for a formal infrastructure for data sharing.
As the project has now ended, we at EDINA are considering options as to how to sustain the repository, including the possibility of a data recycler within Digimap. Watch this space for future announcements!