The emergence of new academic disciplines that embrace geospatial analysis allow GIS librarians to be involved in collaboration and outreach work that promotes the academic library and the subject and technical expertise of GIS librarians. The Don River Valley Historical Mapping Project (DVHMO) is an example of such a scholarly collaborative project. At the University of Toronto, the map and GIS librarian, Marcel Fortin, collaborated with PhD history student Jennifer Bonnell (currently a history postdoctoral fellow at the University of Guelph) in a historical mapping project that would promote and breathe new life into library resources. By drawing on paper-based, historical geographic resources, such as fire insurance plans, topographic maps, county atlases, and planning and conservation reports, they built several geospatial historical data sets of shorelines, industries, and landownership data. The digital data sets are now available free online, and intended to be used by researchers and curious citizens alike. Through projects like these, GIS librarians develop services that draw on their longstanding expertise of maintaining collections and promoting free and open access to information. At the same time, they demonstrate how librarians can become the architects of new information. They thereby assert the skills of academic librarians as research partners and data creators.

This paper charts the development and delivery of a Web 2.0 informed community engagement tool and application programming interface (API) developed at EDINA in partnership with the National Library of Scotland, as part of the JISC Digitisation and e-Content Programme. The AddressingHistory Web tool enables members of the community, both within and beyond academia (particularly local history groups and genealogists), to enhance and combine data from digitized historical Scottish Post Office Directories with contemporaneous large-scale historical maps. The paper discusses the background of post office directories and the corresponding georeferenced old maps for Scotland, the technical platforms deployed including sustainable software components, and Web applications and services. It also examines issues relating to data parsing, user generated content (UGC) created by the community including georeferencing, and the use of social media amplification for community engagement and future directions. To conclude, the paper argues that to be successful online, crowdsourcing tools such as the one developed for this project require a critical mass of content to fully engage the user community and that such success will ultimately be measured by continual and extended use within the wider community.

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Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeThis article refers to:Spatial Information Plays a Key Role in Providing Assistance during the Queensland and Victorian Flood Crises

This survey was created by The University of Tennessee (UT) Libraries to assess the need for providing geographic information system (GIS) and global positioning system (GPS) services to the UT Knoxville, community. In the past few years, the UT Libraries have seen an increase in the number of students and faculty who need help with GIS-related technologies (GIS and GPS). To meet these needs, the library has expanded virtual training and begun to collaborate with other departments on campus to assist users with GIS needs. This survey attempts to answer the question: Where does the library fit into campus GIS-related services? Graduate students and faculty who participated in the survey agreed that the library should play a central role in offering GIS-related services. However, the survey results show that there is not enough training available with GIS-related technologies on campus. If the library is to play a central role, then additional resources should be considered to support GIS-related services in the library and across campus.