----------------------------Original message---------------------------- State University of New York at Stony Brook Stony Brook, NY 11794-3331 David Y Allen Library-Reference 516 632-7110 09-Feb-1996 04:43pm EST FROM: DYALLEN TO: Remote Addressee ( [log in to unmask] ) Subject: GIS and levels of service This is a very late response to Janet Collins' questions about GIS and levels of service. I think she raises some very important questions which have largely gone unanswered, and after much thought I am still not sure how to answer them, but here are my latest thoughts on the subject. I have spent many, many hours learning how to use ArcView 2 and First Street, and have by no means mastered all features in these programs. I have found the programs frustratingly difficult to work with--in part because of poor written documentation and grudging support from ESRI. It would be helpful if there were a ListServ just for ArcView users. I have learned the programs well enough to produce maps, although so far the demand for them has not been heavy. Even when students come asking for a computer produced map, I can often meet their needs better and more quickly by photocopying a sheet map or a page from an atlas. I do make maps for patrons using ArcView, and it takes me anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 hour to create a map. We do not charge for maps, but for reasons of time I have discouraged professors from making assignments requiring maps and refused the occasional request to "produce all possible demographic maps" of an area. I would not consider the option of pointing a student to the computer and saying good luck. I have written out five pages of fairly detailed instructions on how to use ArcView with First Street, and one faculty member has told me that he has found my instructions more helpful than anything written by ESRI or Wessex in learning how to use the programs (faint praise indeed). Only a few graduate students and faculty have the need or motivation to learn how to use the programs on their own. Displaying raster maps and printing simple outline maps is not much of a problem. The crunch comes with complicated demographic maps where you have to choose variables and make decisions on how to display them. The concerns of people like Larry Keenan have considerable justification in my eyes. The making of good demographic maps requires the complex skills of a professional mapmaker, and most librarians don't have the time to learn or apply them. Our forte is acquiring, storing, and making information available, including cartographic data in digital form. Teaching people how to make maps with this data should probably be the task of the faculty in various departments. The closest analogy is using programs like SPSS to analyze demographic data. Librarians receive the data and make it available, but we don't analyze it for our patrons. I find it difficult to deduce from the above considerations any very definite answer to the question about "what levels of service" we should be providing. I suppose it depends on the level of demand, as well as on staffing considerations, and even on the abilities and inclinations of individual map librarians.