Repost from 2012 (forwarded by Angie)
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: NIMA/NGA nautical charts online??
Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2012 20:10:10 -0500
From: Lee, Kent (EVIS) <[log in to unmask]>
To: Maps, Air Photo, GIS Forum - Map Librarianship <[log in to unmask]>
Michael, list:
The NGA nautical charts have been quietly disappearing from official
public distribution over the past two years. I think there have been a
few waves of activity affecting both print and digital chart access.
First, the FAA stopped their warehousing relationship with NGA and
therefore distributing them as paper lithos via agents. (Some agents,
including us, picked up complete sets of what the FAA was offering as of
April 2010, and have been selling stocks of those ever since.)
I believe that about this time the FDLP flow was also terminated, so
presumably no US libraries have received any NGA charts (as opposed to
NOAA charts, which continue). (Our information, by the way, is that with
respect to the current-edition NGA charts, there are something like 4880
of them, and of these, some 280 were printed in 2010 and 330 in 2011.)
I would be very interested to hear if US libraries--even LC or
NARA--continue to receive new editions of NGA printed charts.
Official distribution of NGA charts returned in 2011, to some degree,
with a print-on-demand program which at its inception applied to the set
of NGA charts as they existed at a point in time somewhere in 2010. In
other words, most new editions of 2010 and apparently all of 2011 and
going forward are not part of this program. It's not clear if this will
change. But print-on-demand program has since been curtailed a bit to
exclude all NGA charts in Regions 3 and 4 (generally speaking, Western
Europe and northern Europe--some 600 charts), and hundreds of other
charts have been line-item-vetoed out of access in the other global regions.
The NGA nautical chart viewer
(http://www.nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/mcd/NGAChartViewer.html) on the NOAA
website generally reflects what is available in the official
print-on-demand world, i.e., something less than 3000 charts.
What appears to be driving this is the copyright concerns of the
hydrographic agencies of various European countries, perhaps also
Australia as well. Most if not all of these organizations have robust
commercialization programs for their data, primarily to the navigation
markets involving digital charts of various kinds. And a lot of NGA
charts incorporate the content of foreign hydrographic agency charts.
NGA does not wish to lose access to these local charts, whose fresh and
authoritative data are essential to maintaining its own global chart
program for its primary customers, namely the US DoD. And that access
is threatened when the local chart producers see the NGA global chart
series as being a threat to their revenue streams.
I believe that it is this same basic concern which keeps most of the
digital vector NGA charts (DNCs) out of the public domain.
The primary alternatives are basically two: either use the latest
available NGA nautical chart, which will probably be a 2010 or older
edition, or if you need to have the latest edition, acquire the local
version of a given nautical chart (UKHO/BA charts for the UK, SHOM
charts for France, etc.). At this time neither option has a
comprehensive online aspect to it, except perhaps with respect to
metadata and thumbnails.
Kent
Kent D. Lee
President and CEO
East View Information Services, Inc.
10601 Wayzata Blvd.
Minneapolis, MN USA 55305
Phone: +1.952.252.1201
Fax: +1.952.252.1202
[log in to unmask]
www.eastview.com
www.geospatial.com
www.cartographic.com
www.evmaplink.com
________________________________
From: Maps-L: Map Librarians, etc. <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Fry, Michael <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, April 3, 2015 12:55 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [MAPS-L] NGA Nautical charts
Apparently I sounded this alarm to the list three years ago [subject = NIMA/NGA nautical charts online??] when I noticed the first group of charts had been removed from the NOAA/OCS site. Kent Lee of Eastview responded with a lengthy and useful explanation.
mf
On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 1:17 PM, Angela R Cope <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Thanks for sharing Michael.
I don't recall hearing about this. We treat nautical charts like they're not copyrighted (giving high resolution tiffs to anyone who wants them). Can someone explain why NOAA/NGA maps are copyrighted?
This is another reason to be careful about weeding collections simply because maps are online. These online map collections are so ephemeral.
Angie
AGSL
opinions are my own
________________________________
From: Maps-L: Map Librarians, etc. <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> on behalf of Fry, Michael <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
Sent: Friday, April 3, 2015 10:11 AM
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: [MAPS-L] NGA Nautical charts
Maybe this isn't news to you all, but I just discovered that the online index and chart viewer that gave the public access to hi-res versions of NGA's nautical charts of non-US coastal waters worldwide have been taken down from NOAA's site. (A couple of years ago they removed most charts due to copyright restrictions. Now they've removed them all.)
See my correspondence with NOAA/OCS below...
For the moment, some charts are still viewable online at www.nauticalchartsonline.com<http://www.nauticalchartsonline.com>. Not sure how long that'll last if copyright is the obstacle to free online access.
mf
Original message: Hi,
Not too long ago, the nauticalcharts.noaa.gov<http://nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/> website hosted indexes to NGA nautical charts of non-US waters and hi-res versions of charts from the handful of regions (1, 5 and 9?) that they still had permission to make freely available.
I don't see this resource available anymore. Has it moved, or has NGA removed all of their nautical charts from free public access?
Thank you.
Michael Fry
Map Librarian and Map Editor
National Geographic Society
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>; 202.857.7098<tel:202.857.7098>
OCS response: Thank you for contacting NOAA. Due to copyright restrictions, we had to remove all NGA charts from our web site.
--
Michael Fry
Map Editor and Senior Map Librarian
National Geographic Society
1145 17th St. N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036
202.857.7098<tel:202.857.7098> and 202.791.1892<tel:202.791.1892>
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
--
Michael Fry
Map Editor and Senior Map Librarian
National Geographic Society
1145 17th St. N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036
202.857.7098 and 202.791.1892
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
|
