----------------------------Original message----------------------------
This is a good topic to chew in before ALA.  Should give some
opportunities for debate at the Mixer Friday night.
 
 
Sue Haffner wrote:
>
> ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
> Do you offer GIS service in your library?
 
If, by that, do you mean a public machine with a computer mapping
program and some data for the user to print out reference maps, yes...
but it doesn't get used much.  It never really has. However the GIS
service of providing data storage and retrieval gets used an enormous
amount.  MAGIC's use statistics have gone from 20Mb of data downloaded
in 1/96 to 978Mb in 1/97.  But these are all remote users.  You might
say that, rather than using the virtual reference capabilities, they are
virtually circulating the data collection.
 
> If so, how is it used? Do students use it for class assignments?
 
Students do use MAGIC data for class assignments, but at sites around
the campus... in the labs in the Schools of Business, LA&S, Natural
Resources and Engineering.  In fact, around the state at regional
campuses and other schools.  Yale, URI and UMass are big users.
 
> Do they require tutoring in using GIS?
 
Yes, I expect they do.  But not by me.  I do tutor them in accessing
MAGIC, and in utilizing paper products that can be either scanned or
digitized for their projects.
 
> Several years ago, this subject was much-discussed
> on this list. Some libraries were at different stages
> in offering--or preparing to offer--GIS services. In
> my own library, we had just installed ARCVIEW on a
> p.c. and were taking the first steps in learning how
> to use it, ourselves.
 
UConn spent a lot of time, years ago, developing reference style GIS
applications, wrote How-Tos, made it available at the General Reference
Desk, the whole thing, but the use never really materialized from that
user group.  It might be UConn, the teachers,  who knows?  I do know
there was, and is, an active community that did want GIS data and did
want the Libraries' services in selecting, procuring and making the data
accessible.
 
> Since then, several GIS sites have been established
> around campus (Engineering, Business, in addition to
> the computer lab in the Geography Dept.) Students in
> these areas use their own labs.
 
You got it.  People like to borrow the books and take them homes or to
their offices to read and study.  They like to do the same with
geodata.  No surprise there.  Does this mean we don't have to serve
them?  No, it means we don't have to worry about supporting thier use in
the library to the extent I think we thought about years ago, but I feel
we have to think more carefully about collection development,
description and access to geodata for our user community.
 
 
> Meanwhile, we have installed a new ARCVIEW release,
> which garbled a lot of what we thought we had learned!
> (It didn't help that we had no fulltime Map Library
> staff until 2 months ago.)
> Now, my new fulltime clerical assistant, who has a
> degree in geography, is taking an ARCVIEW class offered
> by the Engineering Dept. This class, though, features
> a still newer release and is mounted on a Sun workstation,
> so it is questionable as to how applicable it will be to
> our library situation.
 
Software upgrades ARE frustrating, but they are a fact of life.
 
> Frustrating! But it makes me wonder if we need to offer
> any more than just the ability for students to pull up
> general maps and a few extra data sources. Do we need to
> flog ourselves to be GIS experts?
 
We need to flog ourselves to be librarians of geodata.  We need to push
ourselves to achieve an understanding of just what the map user was
doing (looking for geo/information on maps!) and what those users are
doing with geodata and how we can help the user.  One of the things we
map librarians have to decide is whether we are curators of a collection
(format bound) or arbiters of a collection (user centered)  Given the
way libraries have been organized, by format, the former is all too
easy.
 
> What do others think?
 
That's what I think.
 
Patrick McGlamery
Map Librarian
UConn, Homer Babbidge Library
MAGIC http://magic.lib.uconn.edu/