Fellow Mapsters!
I received an email from Camille Lannan, who is the map
cataloger for the Brooklyn Historical Society. She sent the
following question and since my library isn't trying to do
much with portals and I know others are, I asked if I could
share this with MAPS-L. She agreed and here is her question:
I
am the map cataloger for the Brooklyn Historical Society
and we working on a grant-funded map digitization project.
We have just hit a road bump and I'm wondering if you
might be able to advise. We have been researching GIS for
our maps through the program BoundingBox, in MARC format
so that it can be added to ALEPH and used in our Catalog
(BobCat). We are also planning to populate a portal with
the digitized maps and GIS data. The problem we're having
is that the MARC format doesn't seem to be readable
anywhere and we're having trouble finding how or where to
convert it to another metadata standard like Dublin Core,
KML or GEOJSON. Are you aware of a program or website
that can interpret MARC GIS or covert it to the other
formats?
I know there are folks out there doing some of this and
I'd appreciate it if you would share your experience and
knowledge with her. I will be out on medical leave starting
tomorrow the 28th so if you could make sure she gets your
reply, she and I would appreciate that.
Susan Moore
University of Northern Iowa
Cedar Falls, IA 50614