Paragraph 20 of JISC Circular 5/99 invites bids for "coherent developments
of a geospatial portal". We would expect such a portal to provide access
to a wide variety of geospatial and also possibly geo-referenced
resources.
This email is to tell you that JCEI is considering two bids made under an
earlier restricted call which may be of relevance to bidders in this
area. Each of these bids comprises primarily a feasibility study, and each
refers more to the infrastructural elements than to the portal
itself. Potential bidders might like to take these bids into account when
writing proposals for a geospatial portal.
The first proposal, led by EDINA with the HDS, ADS and MIMAS is called
"Geo-Crosswalk - a feasibility study into the provision if a British and
Irish Gazeteer service". "The project will assess the feasibility of
developing and providing an online, Z39.50 compliant, fast, scalable and
extensible British and Irish gazeteer service, which would play a crucial
role supporting geographic searching in the DNER." This is a 6-month
project, and could start well before projects funded under 5/99 could
start.
The second proposal, again led by EDINA with the Data Archive, MIMAS and
ADS, is called "A Geo-data Browser for the HE Community: A scoping study
for a geo-spatial portal". The project would assess the requirements of
the HE community for a geo-data portal, review the NGDF Metadata
Guidelines and other metadata standards with regard to the needs of the
academic community, investigate the suitability of the controlled
vocabularies being proposed by the NGDF, and identify geospatial resources
held by EDINA, the Data Archive, MIMAS, AHDS and other providers/
custodians within HE. The project may prototype a Z39-50 target database.
This is a 10-12 month project.
Peter Burnhill or David Medyckyj-Scott would be the contacts for both
these bids, the results of which would be made available to a successful
geospatial portal bid. If you contact me expressing interest, I will let
you know as soon as there is any final decision on these bids.
An important principle in relation to plans for portal bids is portal
independence: a portal should serve its user base and offer equitable
access to datasets, regardless of the data centre which hosts the
datasets. It may be difficult for data centres (which clearly have a
closer relationship to their own resources than to other resources) to be
convincing on this issue; a data centre would need to demonstrate clear
"chinese walls" within its organisational structure which would allow the
portal to operate independently. There is certainly room for geospatial
portal bids from organisations other than data centres.
--
Chris Rusbridge
Programme Director, Electronic Libraries Programme
The Library, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK
Phone 01203 524979 Fax 01203 524981
Email [log in to unmask]
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