BTAA-GIN Collection Stories

By Daniel Dotson and Joshua Sadvari At Ohio State, our map collections include more than 175,000 geologic, topographic, and thematic maps distributed across our Geology Library, Gardner Family Map Room, Architecture Library, Special Collections, and more. While we have not yet contributed scanned maps to the geoportal, our participation in the project has been of great benefit to us in identifying potential collections for digitization and discussing effective map scanning workflows with our peers. We look forward to contributing scanned maps from our collections in the future. Ohio State is looking at a few options for adding scanned map content. Click the links to view the print records from the OSU Library Catalog. We have three main categories: Public domain maps, not digitized elsewhere We have a number of maps in our collections that are public domain. Some of these are in patron-accessible collections, while others are in our Special Collections units. These items would be check...

 By  Karen Majewicz The Minnesota Geospatial Commons was officially launched in 2015, and serves as the state’s central clearinghouse for public geospatial data. The site runs on an open source application (CKAN) and is operated by the Minnesota Geospatial Information Office (MnGeo) . The Commons has grown from about 200 unique datasets at the time of public launch to over 800 today. Total Number of Datasets in the Minnesota Geospatial Commons between July 2014-July 2019  https://gisdata.mn.gov/stats#total-datasets Contributors Contributors include state departments and agencies, such as Natural Resources, Transportation, Health, Agriculture, Revenue, Education, Water & Soil, and Animal Health. Metropolitan entities, such as the Emergency Services Board, the Mosquito Control District, and MetroGIS have also contributed resources. Submitting public data to the Commons is voluntary, but several counties, including Dakota, Itasca, Faribault, Hennepin, Lake, Meeker, Ram...

By Cecilia Smith Facility Geofence: Iowa What is the item? A shapefile with the Salt and Brine locations for Iowa Department of Transportation facilities. What BTAA Library submitted the item? University of Iowa Interesting tidbits: Salt and Brine locations are where Iowa DOT’s snow plows are kept. This data layer contains a polygon for each of these locations. Each polygon covers the entire area on which a facility sits. This enables two related geospatial applications: geofencing and automated vehicle location (AVL). Geofencing is the use of a virtual perimeter for a real geographic area. AVL involves determining the geographic location of a vehicle and transmitting the information to a database. In this case, the polygons act as geofences, meaning that as an AVL enabled snow plow enters or leaves the area of a polygon, the trip start or stop is recorded. That information can then be used for planning operations and communication to the public. Thanks to these types of data, Iowans ...