Geospatial Data on Your Own Terms

Abstract

Increasingly, geospatial data are being produced and consumed for many different purposes, ranging from urban planning to geographical analysis tasks related to sociological, historical, and literary studies. Everyone from students to scientists to professionals in many different scholarly and business disciplines has likely found—or is soon likely to find—themselves asking questions that can be answered using geospatial data. Consumers of geospatial data tend to want it on deman —wherever, whenever, and however they can get it—and of course they want this process made easy. This article highlights two recent ways in which librarians at the University of Idaho assisted researchers with the development of unique geospatial Web applications to advance research, to better communicate the results of research, and to empower researchers with the knowledge to take advantage of these technologies. Additionally, the author considers how emerging geospatial technologies may provide opportunities for libraries to build applications upon their geospatial repositories that will provide users with answers to their research questions.