----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Comment to Alan: Of course libraries are really about service to information, not necessarily about collections of information. Paper demanded that there be a collection in one (or many) places so that serve can be performed. Serve to the nation's geographic/spatial information will suffer unless a public conduit is maintaine d. I do believe Alan, that in the Spatial Metadata Standards FGDC has benefitted by the library communities experience in describing material. What has to be assured is that the reference service aspect follow the description of the data, as it does in a good library. How do we get this into the Depository Library Council? Patrick McGlamery ---------------------- PATRICK MCGLAMERY MAP LIBRARIAN U-5M HOMER BABBIDGE LIBRARY UNIV. OF CONNECTICUT STORRS, CT 06268 (203) 486-4589 LIBMAP1@UCONNVM ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I'm not a map librarian; I'm a GIS specialist. As a participant in the Federal Geographic Data Committee, all that I have seen about with the National Spatial Data Infrastructure has been digital products--nothing paper. I'm left thinking that traditional libraries and map librarians are already marginalized. Tools like EPA's GRIDS (an IBM mainframe depository of geographic data) and USGS-WRD's Distributed Spatial Data Library (an ARC/INFO and WAIS data distribution system--this is still being developed), to name a few, are the first steps toward the NSDI--and they, to my knowledge, have been developed with the assistance of any sort of librarian, map or otherwise. The price tag for the NSDI is oriented toward the elimination of paper products in favor of digital databases and communication. Alan Brenner