Contributing to GSD GeoData Collection

This page is intended to provide guidance for members of the GSD community who would like to add datasets to the GSD's Collection of Place-Based Information Resources. This collection is very informal by library standards. The lack of rigor makes it easy to contribute, and increases the number of interesting datasets that are available. Informality is also a disadvantage, since the lack of documentation makes it difficult to systematically catalog, search and explore the the collection. The GSD Computer Resources Department is currently engaged in a project to develop a better structure and documentation standard for this collection that will include guidelines and tools for organizing project data and documentation so that it can be better archived for posterity in Harvard's Libraries.

Background

• The GSD Archive of Place-Based Data
• Best Practices for organizing your Place-Based Data Collection.
• Handy Form for Documenting your Collection!
• The GSD Placedata Catalogging Initiative
• MapCat Project Notes

Keeping an organized archive oif data requires a certain amount of documentationm do each asset in the collection. For now, we will not burden contributors with rigorous requirements for submitting data. Just a few suggestions for choosing what to contribute, and for providing optional, but very useful documentation for your files. You can read more about what kinds of data we are collecting and then you can use a Handy Web Form for Documenting your Collection!

What to Contribute

The Geo folder holds compilations of place-based information resources. This includes, but is not necessariloy limited to:

• Geographic Information Systems datasets, scanned maps and aerial photographs
• Computer Aided Design files and 3d Models
• Site photographs

The key to all of this is that within a compilation, wvery resources is related to the study of s particular place.

How to Contribute

The following is an ordered list of suggestions for submitting data to the GSD data collection. Apart fro the first, these are optional suggestions. Future generations of GSD students will be grateful that you have taken the trouble to make your information available!

• Notify the GSD Spatial Data Curator that you have place-baced information to share: If your data are in a publicly accessible drive on the network, such as a course folder or the nettmp directory, simply email pbcote ~at~ gsd.harvard.edu with information about how to pick up the data.
• Minimal Documentation for the Collection: It will be nice if a text file in your folder explains some useful information (all of this is optional but much appreciated!) Our convention would be to save this information in a plain text file named metadata.txt at the top level of your collection dierectory. See the NEW Handy Web Form for Documenting your Collection!
  1. Title of the Collection (e.g. Central Square Studio)
  2. The purpose of the collection (e.g. data collected for the Spring 2006 Central Square Studio, led by Georgio Skampi.)
  3. The time period of content represented in the data.
  4. The Source of the data (with contact information if possible),
  5. Name and Affiliation of the Collector/Submitter (e.g. Collected by Nemo Jones, TA for the Studio)
  6. The collection date the date that the data were collected.
  7. The Place covered by a dataset can be described with any or all of the following:
     1. Subject: Building, Neigborhood, or Other Geographic Feature
     2. City
     3. Province or State covered by area of interest
     4. Country
  8. Access and Use Permission (if known), (e.g. No restrictions Re-use permitted within the design school only, Re-use permitted within Harvard community. If there are specific licenses included with the data, you could refer to these.
  9. References to Supplemental Information if other documentation is provided for the resources in this collection, you can provide pointers. To the extent that this supplemental documentation can be saved with the data itself, this would be good.
• Clean up and Organize the Collection It will be very useful if someone who is familiar with the collection spent some time removing redundant copies of resources and organizing the rest of it in such a way to faciltiate re-use. If there are several datasets belonging to different application types, such as GIS Data; CAD and 3d Data; or Site Photos; consider making sub-folders according to the function of data. Further, if data are from several sources, it is useful to make sub-folders by source, so that documentation specific to that source can be created and stored in the same folder with the data.

Questions regarding this project can be directed to the GSD Spatial Data Curator, Paul Cote, pbcote ~at~ gsd.harvard.edu.