Julie Sweetkind-Singer’s research while affiliated with Stanford University and other places

Herbert Hoover, thirty-first President of the United States, was a highly successful geologist and mining engineer before entering the world of politics. He came to Stanford University in 1891, a member of its first class and one of the first graduates with a degree in geology. Recently, Branner Earth Sciences Library & Map Collections came to hold the only known manuscript copy of a map made by him during this time. This article relates the story of the acquisition of the map, Hoover's time as a geology student, and the beginnings of the Stanford Geological Survey.

The National Geospatial Digital Archive is a collaborative project between the University of California at Santa Barbara and Stanford University. The project was funded by the Library of Congress through their National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP). The goal of the collaboration was to collect, preserve, and provide long-term access to at-risk geospatial data. The project partners created preservation environments at both universities, created and populated a format registry, collected more than ten terabytes of geospatial data and imagery, wrote collection development policies governing acquisitions, and created legal documents designed to manage the content and the relationship between the two nodes.

There are many similarities between building a geospatial digital archive and building a hard-copy map collection, and two major ones are the necessity to have a collection development policy and the amount of hard work required to seek out and acquire the resources. Two institutions, University of California at Santa Barbara and Stanford University, the initial partners in the National Geospatial Digital Archives (NGDA), chose to collect digital data that was in line with each library's standard collection strengths and responsibilities. Collection development policies were written for the project as a whole and for each partner institution. While based on traditional paper map policies, these geospatial collection development policies are tailored specifically for digital data by including sections on metadata, versioning, file formats, proprietary formats, data set size, and ownership/access considerations. During the acquisition phase of the contract a considerable amount has been learned about file formats, data acquisition of compressed vs. uncompressed files, short-term storage prior to repository ingest, and metadata creation. While metadata creation at the collection-level/series-level has been relatively easy the acquisition phase has underscored the challenges inherent in creating accurate item-level metadata. One of the central findings of the NGDA experience is that format information is vital for long-term preservation. Thus, the need to understand file formats and specifications has led to the creation of a format registry specifically for geospatial materials.

The National Geospatial Digital Archive, funded by the Library of Congress, is a partnership between the University of California, Santa Barbara and Stanford University with the purpose of providing long-term preservation of and access to geospatial data and imagery. Geospatial content in the public domain as well as that which is not is being accessioned into our collections. While public domain data may often be accessioned without having to seek explicit permission from the agency or group creating and/or hosting the materials, private data should be captured with a clear understanding of the rights and responsibilities of the stakeholders, be they the content owner or the university. In addition, the two collecting nodes (and any future nodes) must agree upon standards of conduct in order to trust that any content brought into the network will be managed well now and into the future. Joint agreements have been written by UCSB and Stanford that codify all of these relationships. This paper will lay out those agreements, which include the Content Provider Agreement, the NGDA Content Collection Node Agreement, and the NGDA Content Collection Node Procedure Manual. These three agreements provide the legal and structural framework of the NGDA allowing the stewardship network to grow over time with the understanding that each new partner will meet the standards necessary to provide secure long-term preservation of the content.

The selection, acquisition, and management of digital data are now part and parcel of the work librarians handle on a day-to-day basis. While much thought goes into this work, little consideration may be given to the long-term preservation of the collected data. Digital data cannot be retained for the future in the same way paper-based materials have traditionally been handled. Specific issues arise when archiving digital data and especially geospatial data. This article will discuss some of those issues, including data versioning, file size, proprietary data formats, copyright, and the complexity of file formats. Collection development topics, including what to collect and why, will also be explored. The work underlying this article is being done as part of an award from the Library of Congress’s National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP). published or submitted for publication