1. National Geospatial Digital Archive
University of California, Santa Barbara
and
Stanford University
The National Geospatial Digital Archive is a collaborative archiving project with UC, Santa Barbara and Stanford. Our goals are to create a network of archives preserving “at-risk” geospatial content, to investigate the roles of the archives in long-term content preservation, and to develop a series of policy agreements governing collection building, rights, and retention of the materials included in the network.
NDIIPP Partners Meeting, San Diego, Jan. 17, 2006

2. Questions and Answers Surprises
Contracts for content acquisition
Lack of format information
Never thought we’d do a format registry
Change in our area and implications
Geographic Exploration Systems arrive!
Google Earth, World Wind, Windows Live Local
* Two surprises have cropped up since inception of the project. First, the difficulty in creating and finalizing a contract governing the collection of data from content providers. Second, the lack of information about geospatial formats – even the most heavily used types. Because of this second factor, we decided quickly that we would have to create our own registry of formats specifically for geospatial content.
* The geospatial landscape literally “shifted” underneath our feet with the purchase of Keyhole by Google, which lead to the creation of Google Earth. This and other Geographic Exploration Systems, have raised awareness of the importance and wide variety of geographic information available to the general public.

3. Contracts
We began our work on the Content Provider agreement by reviewing the work done by others serving or preserving digital content. From there, we got into the meat of the contract: the rights and responsibilities given to and exercised by the content provider and the custodians of the materials. We explored whether or not the NGDA needed to have standing as a separate legal entity. We created provisions to allow us to make as many copies as necessary “in order to preserve it.” We debated when and if a content provider could ever remove their materials and why. We made sure to clearly state the uses for the content in order to ensure it matched what we did with other information held by our institutions. This has taken time and persistence. It is our hope that we will finalize this document within the next couple of months – nearly 2 years after we started.

4. Format Registry Descriptive semantics of file formats.
Pulling from other format registries for standard file formats.
Format specifications collected on an “as-needed” basis.
Extensive file format information for DOQs, DRGs, ESRI formats, and GeoTIFF.
In order to preserve and increase the likelihood of use of a format in the future, it is critical to know as much about it as possible by collecting its descriptive semantics. Format registries have been created for non-geospatial file types. Pulling together information about geospatial formats, by and large, has not been done. We rely on other format registries to update standard file formats. We are collecting geospatial format information for our own registry. When we know we will take in a specific format, we build out the registry information. Extensive work has been done on digital ortho photos, digital raster graphics, different ESRI formats such as shapefiles and coverages, and GeoTIFF format.

5. Format Registry Community WIKI Staff open staff Refinement System
application
Community
Staff
NGDA Server
"Formats Manager" application
WIKI
Refinement System
Name +
Description +
File ext +
Supporting documentation +
spec files
Index.xml +
Web Directory
open
staff
Archivas
25 geospatial formats to date
* We are working towards the creation of a community WIKI that will allow users of specific formats to input metadata into the registry. This wiki will be monitored by NGDA staff who will check on the content, manage the way in which information is organized, and create supporting documentation and specification files for the formats.
* The community wiki is being used internally and formats are being entered. The front interface is being fine-tuned and will be demonstrated during one of the tools session.

6. Google Earth, burst into the public conscience after its launch in June, Suddenly, the world could be seen in a fascinating and new way through layers such as satellite imagery, point and line data, and, perhaps most compelling, the ability to add one’s own data points through the use of Google Community. Other groups created their own versions of these virtual worlds – often called Geographic Exploration Systems, so named because of the ability to look at and add information, rather than the ability to query and manipulate the data as in a Geographic Information System or GIS. NASA developed WorldWind for the display of scientific data. GeoTango created a 3-D world with “real-looking” buildings. GeoTango was purchased by Microsoft who incorporated the technology into Virtual Earth.

7. * Google Earth is working with a variety of partners to increase the amount of content on their platform. Recently added were a number of maps from the David Rumsey collection, a set of historic maps from the Middle East are shown here. The Rumsey map imagery is part of the NGDA content.
Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft’s decisions to add satellite imagery to their online mapping products, as well as the popularity of Google Earth, have introduced the general population to types of geospatial data they never knew existed.
This has brought up a host of questions for us and others archiving geospatial content. What is the relationship between universities and/or private archives and public entities such as Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo? Should there be a division of labor? It is expensive to maintain an archive and services. A model that would distribute the work is one to consider: archiving would happen at the university level, while display would be with these groups.

8. * Google has also released a free Java-based API that allows one to integrate their data with the Google Maps background. This API was used as the basis on which we built our interface for the archives. For the ADL Gazetteer, the map interface uses the Yahoo API.
* These services have made it much easier to expose our content. We are working from the concept of instant gratification. We want people to see and get something immediately. The backdrop you see forms the basis of a geographic area in which you can look for different types of data in a variety of formats. From the home page, Landsat imagery is draped over the outline of North America.

9. One drills down to an area of interest, Santa Barbara in this case
* One drills down to an area of interest, Santa Barbara in this case. The boxes at the bottom left display the different collections that are available for viewing, including maps, air photos, and satellite imagery. The middle box on the bottom highlights an aerial photography collection dated from the 1940s. The air photos that make up this collection are shown on the map in the middle of the screen. They are geographically placed in their correct location. One is immediately able to grasp what is in the collection for their specific area.

10. * Clicking on one of the images pulls up a larger thumbnail, which allows the user to view the metadata and download the desired image. Note that the opacity has changed so you can see what’s underneath the air photo. The opacity bar is on the bottom right of the screen. One can also manipulate the size of the thumbnail in order to see what is behind the image. This type of display requires geographic coordinates for everything we put in if it is to be displayed this way.
* The goal is to make the interface seamless. It won’t matter which archive houses the data. We’re currently working together to get this federated search environment completed in the next few months.