Georeferenced and Geospatial Digital Collections
Books and Special Topic Journal Issues
Distributed Geolibraries
A comprehensive look at the issues surrounding geospatial digital libraries as well as a comprehensive guide to building one.
D-Lib Magazine (ISSN 1082-9873) May 2004, Volume 10 Number 5
This issue of D-Lib is devoted to georeferencing and geospatial data. It brings together information about several projects as well as general articles that discuss issues in georeferencing in digital libraries.
Journal Articles
Haas, S.C. (2004). X Marks the Spot: The Role of Geographic Location in Metadata Schemas and Digital Collections. RLG DigiNews.
A quick overview of the options for metadata in geographic collections.
Hyland, N. (2002). Preliminary Geospatial DL decisions: GIS and data sharing in libraries: considerations for digital libraries. Inspel, 36 (3), 207-215.
Mattison, D. (2004). Categories of webmaps: Beyond road maps. Searcher, 12 (1), 27-40.
Organizations and Standards
Alexandria Digital Library
Behind the Alexandria Digital Library are the people who created it. This site has lots of information about how they did it, general good practices, and their current research.
Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata (CSDGM)
Federal standard for sharing spatial data.
Dublin Core Geographic elements
Information on Dublin Core elements related to geographic data.
ECAI
ECAI is a community of academics, librarians, government organizations, and non-profits encouraging the development of spatially and temporally referenced digital projects. They helped create several digital libraries and also developed software specifically for spatial referencing. The site is a good resource for information and support.
ESRI
A major software developer. They have written several white papers on GIs and Digital Libraries, so it's worth checking on them from time to time.
Geographic Names Information System (US) and GEOnet Names Server (International)
Two major US government gazetteers
USGS Formal Metadata: Information and Software
Frequently asked questions from the U.S. Geological Survey about the federal government's metadata standards for geospatial data.
Major Digital Libraries and Projects
Boston Streets: Mapping Directory Data
A joint effort between Tufts and the Bostonian Society. Explore the history of the places you've been.
British Library Sound Archive
A small but enjoyable collection of field recordings or all types of birds and animals. You will need RealPlayer to listen to the files.
Collect Britain
A very cool collection that brings together rich audio recordings of dialects and oral history as well as images and interactive exhibitions.
David Rumsey Map Collection
A beautiful interface with interesting options for interacting with the maps.
Kentuckiana Digital Library
A very nice local collection created by the libraries of universities across Kentucky. The "About" page gives a great background on the development of the library.
Library of Congress Map Collection
A small digital collection, but a good place to find out what the LoC is implementing.
Perseus Digital Library
One of the DLI "Big 9" and one of the first georeferenced digital libraries. The interface is very slow though.