-------- Original Message --------
Subject:        Re: Metadata standards for GPS coordinates
Date:   Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:22:08 -0600
From:   Angie Cope <[log in to unmask]>
Organization:   American Geographical Society Library
To:     Maps-L <[log in to unmask]>


Ken,

Have you tried sending a similar inquiry to a digital collection list
serve?  I found these:

Digital Libraries Research Mailing List through IFLA
http://infoserv.inist.fr/wwsympa.fcgi/info/diglib

or

Digital Preservation Coalition
http://www.dpconline.org/advice/discussion-lists.html

-------- Original Message --------
Subject:        Re: Metadata standards for GPS coordinates
Date:   Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:13:21 -0700
From:   Ken Rockwell <[log in to unmask]>
To:     Maps, Air Photo, GIS Forum - Map Librarianship
<[log in to unmask]>



Thanks to those who responded to my query about standards for
coordinates. Many of you answered in terms of traditional cataloging and
MARC format. The context I’m dealing with is different: Content-DM,
digital collections, Dublin Core, etc. We have a collection with a
single field for GPS coordinates, rather than putting Lat and Long in
separate fields. It’s for a single point, so no northernmost vs.
southernmost, E vs. W, just the spot location of the data collection.
There may not be any written “best practices” for this, but I see the
trend toward decimal degrees, so I think that’s what we’ll be doing.
While we may have the coordinate in terms of degrees, minutes, and
seconds, I’ve found a website that does a conversion to the decimal
form, including negative for West:

http://boulter.com/gps/

It’s flexible as to the input format, and it even produces a map showing
the site! Nifty!

--Ken Rockwell