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March 2025 Program Status Update

Monthly Highlight: BTAA-GIN FAST Subject Terms Workgroup Update

BTAA in FAST

The BTAA-GIN FAST for Subject Terms Workgroup explored using FAST (Faceted Application of Subject Terminology) to improve search and discovery in the BTAA Geoportal. FAST, adapted from Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), offers a more streamlined and accessible way to tag metadata.

The group developed guidance for applying FAST terms across records in the Geoportal, both retrospectively and going forward. This work aims to make geographic data more discoverable and useful for researchers across member institutions.

Next Steps

Because place names and inconsistent keyword data complicate the use of FAST, it's unclear how easily terms can be applied or extracted from existing or incoming records. The group is considering options such as developing broad category headings and metadata guidelines, or requesting MARC records and data from local systems. Metadata from Indiana University and the University of Minnesota will be reviewed to better understand current challenges.

Program Activities

Committees

  • Reviewed new item page design.
  • Previewed the draft Strategic Technology Plan 2025-2026.
  • Reviewed candidates for potential data preservation/rescue and discussed the benefits of establishing a workgroup to update the collection development policy.
  • Committee members committed to personally inviting at least three colleagues to the upcoming conference and group brainstormed "Did You Know" factoids to highlight the BTAA Geoportal during event breaks.
  • Published Collections Story: Discovery of Geological Maps in the BTAA Geoportal by Tara Anthony, Penn State University Libraries.
  • Provided examples of at-risk data to consider for the geospatial data archiving pilot and facilitated an full GIN discussion on politically at-risk state datasets at the March program team meeting.
  • Coordinated logistics for an upcoming April sprint on Geodata archiving, including access to storage for external participants, folder structure for tracking activity, and a review workflow using shared Hub spreadsheets. Participants will prioritize and manually download federal datasets, with a focus on shapefiles, hosted feature layers, and Heat Watch data.
  • New members joined to learn more about our committees to assist them as they decide where to get involved. Ryan introduced GIN's collaborative structure and the Coordinating Committee’s central role. Individual committees -- Knowledge, Community Engagement, TECH -- shared their focus areas, current and upcoming work, and cross-committee collaborations.
  • Discussed the 2/28 Executive Committee Meeting and their input on and support of our draft Strategic Technology Plan.

Workgroups

  • Created a final report documenting research, outputs, and impact.
  • Will sunset group after April TECH Committee meeting
  • Draft survey in progress.
  • Members confirmed and the first meeting to take place in April.

BTAA Geoportal

Analytics Statistics

This month by the numbers

  • Visitors: 8,186
  • Visits: 9,012
  • Downloads: 735
  • Visits with download: 8.16%
  • Outlinks: 2,242
  • Visits with outlink: 24.88%
  • Num. searches: 1,943
  • Search keywords: 668
  • Pageviews: 19,618

Unique visitors by month

More stats

See full statistics on our Analytics Dashboard

What Users are Looking for

  • Top Google searches leading to the Geoportal

    1. btaa geoportal
    2. ohio school district map
    3. south bend city limits
    4. 1937 aerial photographs wisconsin
    5. outagamie county gis
    6. milwaukee voting wards
    7. evansville city limits
    8. school district map ohio
    9. sanborn maps michigan
    10. wetlands map nj

  • Top internal keyword searches

    1. Sanborn
    2. Wildlife
    3. Analysis
    4. Ukraine
    5. Chicago
    6. Sanborn
    7. ArcGIS HUB
    8. Domain
    9. Critical habitat
    10. Aerial photos


Collections

Total records as of April 1, 2025: 105,296

Records Apr1 2025
BTAA Geoportal Records from 2016 to April 1, 2025

January Harvesting Activities

Title Records added Records retired
Reharvest geodata@wisc for new parcel links 740 1059
Reharvest geodata@wisc 2025-03 20 0
Ann Arbor Data Catalog 5 10
State of Washington Geospatial Open Data Portal 960 0
Counties in Washington Hubs 3 0
2025-03-04 Scan ArcGIS Hubs 1232 214
MDL UMN Duluth maps 15 0
2025-03-11 Scan ArcGIS Hubs 69 0
MDL Soudan Mine maps 32 0
2025-03-18 Scan ArcGIS Hubs 116 45
Reharvest Humanitarian Data Exchange Q1 2025 637 0
Reharvest HUD ArcGIS Hub 108 93
2025-03-25 Scan ArcGIS Hubs 89 70
Socrata Harvest Q1 2025 0 0

Web Development

New Features or Enhancements

  • Completed item view page redesign
  • Developed presentations and documentation for a metadata API

More development details

Read the most recent development report for more details

Priority Projects Update

Refer to our Priority Projects board.