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. 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
Section titled “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, Metadata coordinator hired, 1st project summit held | Environmental scan of available technologies | 9 institutions sign on |
| 2016 | Lead application developer joins, 1st user testing of BTAA Geoportal | Launched BTAA Geoportal with GIS data records, University of Iowa adds scanned maps records | Indiana University |
| 2017 | 2nd in-person project summit | - | University of Chicago and 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 in-person 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, 1st BTAA GIS Conference | Began developing custom metadata editor | University of Nebraska |
| 2021 | Presented a webinar to WAML and to the BTAA B1G Convening, 2nd BTAA GIS Conference | Added licensed data to the Geoportal, Metadata editor (GEOMG) put into production, OpenGeoMetadata Aardvark schema implemented | - |
| 2022 | 3rd BTAA GIS Conference, evolved from the "BTAA Geospatial Data Project" into the "BTAA Geospatial Information Network" | Developed and upgraded to GeoBlacklight 4.0, Cloud hosting for Geoportal, moved to AWS | Rutgers University-New Brunswick |
| 2023 | Implemented new governance and committee structure, 4th BTAA GIS Conference | Released Harvesting Guide | Northwestern University |
| 2024 | Associate Director of Program & Outreach hired, awarded best paper award from Journal of Map & Geography Libraries | Geodata Collection Pilot kicks-off, Allmaps plugin released | - |
| 2025 | Launched quarterly email newsletter, 5th Big Ten GIS Conference, held in-person Strategic Planning Retreat, set Strategic Priorities (2025-28) | Geoportal grows to 100,000 records from over 200 providers, published Geodata Collection Strategic Plan (2024-2026) and launched pilot, Technology Strategic Plan (2025–2026) published, Urban Base Layers curation framework established, released Allmaps plugin | University of Oregon & University of Washington |
| 2026 | 6th Big Ten GIS Conference | Launched rebuilt Geoportal on an API-first architecture, debuted Data Citation Generator | University of Southern California |