Program History¶
Our collaborative program was first proposed in 2012 when three map librarians issued a white paper, A Collaborative Vision for Spatial Scholarship across the CIC.(1) This paper identified geospatial data as a long-term, interdisciplinary need that would necessitate increasingly complex infrastructures to manage. The authors concluded that these infrastructures would likely be prohibitively expensive for each CIC library to maintain individually, and they proposed collaborative solutions for the long-term management of geospatial resources.
- Bidney, M., Mattke, R. & Weessies, K. (2012). A Collaborative Vision for Spatial Scholarship across the CIC, 2012, white paper. http://hdl.handle.net/11299/213250
The BTAA Geospatial Data Project officially began in 2015 with 9 member institutions and grew to incorporate all BTAA libraries over time. Since that time, we built the BTAA Geoportal, started an annual GIS conference, and strengthened the network of geospatial library workers. In 2023, we evolved into a new structure, now called the BTAA Geospatial Information Network.
Milestones¶
| Year | Program activities and events | Technology & collections | Members join |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | CIC Center for Library Initiatives conference focused on geospatial | - | - |
| 2015 | Project kickoff meeting with 9 institutions | Environmental scan of available technologies | 9 institutions sign on |
| 1st project summit | Metadata coordinator | ||
| 2016 | 1st user testing of BTAA Geoportal | Launched BTAA Geoportal with GIS data records | Indiana University |
| University of Iowa adds scanned maps records | Lead application developer | ||
| 2017 | 2nd in-person project summit | - | University of Chicago |
| The Ohio State University | |||
| 2018 | 2nd user testing of BTAA Geoportal | Implemented thumbnails and advanced search | - |
| Released version 1 of Metadata Handbook | |||
| 2019 | hosted Strategic Leadership Group inperson meeting to discuss expansion and sustainability | Upgraded to GeoBlacklight 2.0 | - |
| Added an Open in ArcGIS button, tooltips, and a citation widget | |||
| 2020 | 3rd user testing of BTAA Geoportal (remotely) | Began developing custom metadata editor | University of Nebraska |
| hosted 1st BTAA GIS Conference | |||
| 2021 | Presented a webinar to WAML | Added licensed data to the Geoportal | - |
| Presented to the BTAA B1G Convening | Metadata editor (GEOMG) put into production | ||
| 2nd BTAA GIS Conference | OpenGeoMetadata Aardvark schema implemented | ||
| 2022 | 3rd BTAA GIS Conference | Developed and upgraded to GeoBlacklight 4.0 | Rutgers University-New Brunswick |
| Evolved from the "BTAA Geospatial Data Project" into the "BTAA Geospatial Information Network" | Cloud hosting for Geoportal moved to AWS | ||
| 2023 | Implemented new governance and committee structure | Released Harvesting Guide | Northwestern University |
| 4th BTAA GIS Conference | |||
| 2024 | - | Geodata Collection Pilot | - |
| Allmaps plugin |
Sprints¶
Our Program Team regularly holds sprints to address various aspects of work. The following table shows sprints by topic and which quarter they were conducted.
| 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | |||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sprints | Q3 | Q4 | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 |
| Blog post | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | ||||||||||||||
| Metadata | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | |||||||||||||||
| Interface | x | x | x | |||||||||||||||||||
| Collections | x | x | x | |||||||||||||||||||
| Education | x | x | x | |||||||||||||||||||