Skip to content
BTAA-GIN Logo BTAA-GIN

Guiding principles

About the Big Ten Academic Alliance Geospatial Information Network

We support the geospatial research community and foster connections among geospatial library professionals.

Our Mission

Section titled “Our Mission”

To support the geospatial research community by making resources easier to find and to foster connections among geospatial library professionals through our collaboration.

  • Our program aims to support the geospatial research community by building and maintaining a collective open-source spatial data infrastructure featuring metadata optimized for spatial discovery platforms.
  • We foster connections among geospatial library professionals, the Big Ten Academic Alliance, and the BIG Collection by sharing expertise and utilizing collective resources while cultivating a culture of deep collaboration and interdependence.

Our Vision

Section titled “Our Vision”

To preserve and share at-risk digital geospatial assets by building a complete spatial data infrastructure.

Our Values

Section titled “Our Values”

Program Values

Section titled “Program Values”

These values guide our overall program decisions and strategic planning.

1. Collaboration & Connection

  • Provide a centralized resource discovery platform to connect data creators, providers, and consumers.
  • Provide a collaborative social infrastructure for librarians and geospatial specialists.
  • Create opportunities for engaging in joint research and sharing scholarly outputs.

2. Diversity, Equity, & Accessibility

  • Lower barriers to accessing geospatial data across a wide range of communities.
  • Create educational resources fostering geospatial literacy.
  • Strive to identify resources that represent diversity in topics, geographic regions, time periods, communities, and languages.

3. Stewardship & Sustainability

  • Invest in open-source technology and communities.
  • Share metadata best practices and schema development.
  • Champion initiatives to preserve and archive digital geospatial assets.

Technical Values

Section titled “Technical Values”

These statements, established in 2025, inform our choices for software development and technology stacks.

1. Resilience & Growth

Section titled “1. Resilience & Growth”

1.1. Durable (Meta)data beyond Ephemeral Applications

We ensure metadata and data remain accessible and usable for future generations, even as tools and platforms evolve.

1.2. Modularity and Scalability

We create flexible systems that grow with changing needs.

1.3. Adoption of Sustainable Technologies

We embrace modern, industry-standard tools to ensure our systems remain reliable, maintainable, and adaptable.

2. User and Community Focus

Section titled “2. User and Community Focus”

2.1. Community-Centered Design

We design tools based on the needs of researchers, libraries, data providers, and users.

2.2. Transparency and Openness

We commit to open standards, open-source tools, and transparent workflows.

2.3. Data Integrity

We prioritize trust by documenting the resource provenance, promoting data citations, and following established FAIR metadata principles.

3. Standards & Interoperability

Section titled “3. Standards & Interoperability”

3.1. Commitment to Standards

We align with widely adopted standards to ensure our tools and metadata are compatible, easy to adopt, and scalable.

3.2. Machine-Readable Metadata

We prioritize metadata structured within a machine-readable catalog format over static document-centered files.