Integrating Geographic Information Systems into Library Services: A Guide for Academic Libraries

Citation

Calvert, P. (2008), "Integrating Geographic Information Systems into Library Services: A Guide for Academic Libraries", The Electronic Library, Vol. 26 No. 6, pp. 923-924. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470810921673

Map librarianship may never be the same again. This interesting book, written by four academic librarians from the University of South Florida Libraries, USA, covers the new and growing field of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and how they can be integrated into library services. Its target market ranges from traditional map custodians to those working in current digital librarianship, especially those who are attempting to build and manage digital geospatial collections in libraries. The book addresses all relevant factors such as the technical, legal and institutional challenges that will be faced.

There are ten chapters in all, the first being a useful introduction collectively written by the four authors, and the last, called “What the future holds” is an attempt to look into a crystal ball. The second chapter makes the point that spatial information is a key element in the growing information economy.

Any information retrieval system needs methods of organisation, and chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6 cover the following:

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  the design of databases and data infrastructures (chapter 3), describing geospatial information with MARC, AACR2, RDA, and metadata (chapter 4);

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  GIS data standards (chapter 5); and

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  ontologies and semantics (chapter 6).

Although the point is made in these four chapters, the theme runs through the whole book that the intersection of libraries and spatial data information is in great need of wider standardisation, especially interoperability standards. The point is also made that there is a huge amount of legacy material in print and (perhaps surprisingly) in digital formats that has already been superseded that must be incorporated into newer digital databases, all of which must be organised for subsequent discovery and retrieval.

The other three chapters cover topics that are perhaps more familiar to librarians without experience of digital geospatial information. Reference services are covered in chapter 7, which includes some thoughts about how information literacy teaching needs to expand to cover tutoring in using spatial information. Collection management is the subject of chapter 8, which raises the need for adding spatial information materials to existing collection development policies. Chapter 9 takes a look at education for librarianship, which is a fair point made by the editors, though how it can be fitted into an already packed curriculum is bound to make the LIS educators scratch their heads.

The range of topics makes this a very useful starting point for those who must address the issue of integrating GIS with library services. Perhaps the major point not covered adequately is the preservation of digitised geospatial information. The book was good reading for a novice like me, and I think many others will find it equally useful.