GRADE Survey

GRADE Questionnaire on Informal geospatial data-sharing

Informal methods	Managed Methods
	Read a journal article or paper of interest and so contact the author directly?		ESRI Data hound-Dog (which searches for free Shapefiles on the web)?
	Part of email group lists?		ESRI geo-chat (forum for chatting and sharing datasets)?
	Use of a localised or group or shared wiki (such as geowiki.com etc)?		Gisdevelopment.net (can upload dissertations/data and download others or use online GIS experts' forum)?
	Personal websites where data can be downloaded from?		Journalofmaps.com (online database of papers and data, if subscribed can also upload)?
	Virtual workspaces (work online together in an access restricted portal)?		Bit Torrent type protocols?
	Burn to CD/DVD and pass manually?		Use of peer-2-peer technology (such as LionShare, Napster, Kazza, Limewire)?
	Send data as email attachments (if below size max or use web email service for large file sends such as yousendit.com)?		Metadata creation and search tools (i.e. EDINA Go-Geo! or GIGateway MetaGenie/Data Locator)?
	Web-based forum groups ?		A general Prints Repository (i.e. UK Data Archive, Funding body archive- NERC-ESRC, Southampton eprints)
	A 'peer' or friends network?		Other? Please Tell us more:
	Via FTP ?
	Other? Please Tell us more:

Informal methods

Managed Methods

Read a journal article or paper of interest and so contact the author directly?

ESRI Data hound-Dog (which searches for free Shapefiles on the web)?

Part of email group lists?

ESRI geo-chat (forum for chatting and sharing datasets)?

Use of a localised or group or shared wiki (such as geowiki.com etc)?

Gisdevelopment.net (can upload dissertations/data and download others or use online GIS experts' forum)?

Personal websites where data can be downloaded from?

Journalofmaps.com (online database of papers and data, if subscribed can also upload)?

Virtual workspaces (work online together in an access restricted portal)?

Bit Torrent type protocols?

Burn to CD/DVD and pass manually?

Use of peer-2-peer technology (such as LionShare, Napster, Kazza, Limewire)?

Send data as email attachments (if below size max or use web email service for large file sends such as yousendit.com)?

Metadata creation and search tools (i.e. EDINA Go-Geo! or GIGateway MetaGenie/Data Locator)?

Web-based forum groups ?

A general Prints Repository (i.e. UK Data Archive, Funding body archive- NERC-ESRC, Southampton eprints)

A 'peer' or friends network?

Other? Please Tell us more:

Via FTP ?

Other? Please Tell us more:

Wish list (PICK 3 ONLY)	Please rank your 3 selections in order of importance, 1 being most important.
Having a national (academic-wide) geospatial repository holding for the UK?	1 2 3
A University local/departmental (e.g. Geography) repository to store upload and download all geospatial datasets created within an institution's research	1 2 3
Having less restrictive licence agreements for academia?	1 2 3
Having no licence agreements, free access to share any datasets?	1 2 3
One central portal that 'finds' datasets and tells you how you could access/contact the data holder in order buy them?	1 2 3
Faster computer network speeds?	1 2 3
Geography forum, similar to Napster or myspace. Users create pages to post data and can search and view author profiles, CVs, photos and related research themes?	1 2 3
If you had control over who used your data or recognition of original work etc?	1 2 3
Having a comprehensive list of informal methods that currently exist (even if not always suitable methods, & non-standardised)?	1 2 3
Other? Please tell us more:	1 2 3

Wish list (PICK 3 ONLY)

Please rank your 3 selections in order of importance, 1 being most important.

Having a national (academic-wide) geospatial repository holding for the UK?

1 2 3

A University local/departmental (e.g. Geography) repository to store upload and download all geospatial datasets created within an institution's research

1 2 3

Having less restrictive licence agreements for academia?

1 2 3

Having no licence agreements, free access to share any datasets?

1 2 3

One central portal that 'finds' datasets and tells you how you could access/contact the data holder in order buy them?

1 2 3

Faster computer network speeds?

1 2 3

Geography forum, similar to Napster or myspace. Users create pages to post data and can search and view author profiles, CVs, photos and related research themes?

1 2 3

If you had control over who used your data or recognition of original work etc?

1 2 3

Having a comprehensive list of informal methods that currently exist (even if not always suitable methods, & non-standardised)?

1 2 3

Other? Please tell us more:

1 2 3

Descriptions of terms used

Geospatial dataset: a dataset that contains coordinate or location references (i.e. postcode). For the purposes of GRADE a geospatial dataset is defined as either: 1) Vector (point, line, polygon) data, 2) Raster (e.g. GeoTIFF images, Digital Terrain Models, orthophotography, satellite imagery), and 3) Tabular data (containing coordinate parameters).

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Wiki: a freely editable webpage, anyone can use and change. Examples include: www.geowiki.co.uk is a 'Virtual psychogeography', or a map which you can annotate and add in your own locations or GPS tracks and comments, and the UK map will build up over time. Wikipedia.org, a free encyclopedia, contains lots of geography and GIS terminology that is editable, and a place to share knowledge, http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Geographical_data is a (world) data and map image edit part of the site, but is mostly USA.

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You send it: http://beta.yousendit.com/: an email web-service for large file emails

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Web-based forum groups There are many examples of web-based forum groups, which discuss GIS issues, see: www.giscafe.com - discussion sites where people post links to free GIS programmes and data, problem-solving issues, and latest news.

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FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is a free programme which has been around for many years and can be found and run in most University GIS labs. It uses UNIX commands to send ASCII and binary data to another IP address using remote nodes.
ESRI Data Hound: http://maps.unomaha.edu/Workshops/Career/ESRI/index4.html - searches the web, ESRI databases and partners for free Shapefiles in a chosen location of interest or data type (need to sign into, and be an ESRI customer)

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GeoChat: http://arcscripts.esri.com/details.asp?dbid=14408b (2006), it is based around MSN Messenger Accounts where parties chat and share geospatial data and information. It only works on Jabber/XMPP compatible servers, to start install a jabber client & register a new account, disconnect and reconnect using GeoChat

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LionShare is a P2P file sharing system for academia: http://lionshare.its.psu.edu/main/. It is part of a Penn State University project using P2P technology and incorporating features such as authentication, directory servers, and owner controlled sharing of files, LionShare promises secure file-sharing capabilities for the easy exchange of image collections, video archives, large data collections, and other types of academic information.

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Metadata is information about a particular data set which may describe, for example, how, when, and by whom it was received, created, accessed, and/or modified and how it is formatted. Data about data. For examples see: Go-Geo! Metadata creator tool from EDINA, and the Go-Geo! search engine Another example is MetaGenie, which is GIgateway's specially developed metadata creation software and search (Data Locator) tool.

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The UK Data Library:http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/

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Digital Repository = A place where content can be deposited, stored, searched, and downloaded (for more information visit GRADE project: : http://edina.ac.uk/projects/grade/ ) It has 4 main characteristics:
- Content is deposited in a repository, whether by the content creator, owner or third party on their behalf
- The repository architecture manages content as well as metadata
- The repository offers a minimum set of basic services e.g. put, get, search, access control
- The repository must be sustainable and trusted, well-supported and well-managed
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Portal = A site that the owner positions as an entrance to other sites on the internet, a portal typically has a search engine and catalogues and pointers to other sites (for example EDINA Go-Geo!).

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Myspace: www.myspace.com — site includes blogs, forums, email groups, and you can download data to your own personalised site

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	Technical ability?
	Access to the internet?
	Access to a reliable and robust data-sharing or repository?
	Digital rights, copyright and licensing restrictions or confusion about how can share?
	Lack of trust in others work to re-work on your dataset?
	Lack of relevant/interesting datasets to find?
	Easier to start again from scratch in a project (quicker and benefits of self-learning aspect) rather than adopting what someone else has already done?
	Lack of metadata accompanying datasets, not enough information to make a 'fit for purpose' judgement?
	Protection over your own intellectual property and research interests?
	Misuse by others, urge to keep all project datasets together as a package and in context?
	Data privacy, concerns over public access?
	Other? If you selected "other" as one of your choices, please tell us more:

Scoping a Geospatial Repository for Academic Deposit and Extraction

The GRADE Project is now closed. This site will no longer be maintained, and may contain broken links.

GRADE Questionnaire on Informal geospatial data-sharing

Wish list (PICK 3 ONLY)

Many thanks.

Descriptions of terms used