The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) is pleased to announce the general release of a new Technology Watch Report on Preserving Geospatial Data today.
First released to DPC Members in July 2023, Preserving Geospatial Data has been authored by Meagan Snow, Geospatial Data Visualization Librarian at the Geography & Map Division of the Library of Congress. Published by the DPC in association with the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), the report is the second edition of an earlier report by Guy McGarva, Steve Morris and Greg Janée, published by the DPC in 2009. Though much of the information in this original report was still relevant, there were many updates necessary given the pace of change in the complex landscape of tools and file formats for geospatial data.
“We first mentioned our ambition to update this Technology Watch Report at our event on this topic last March," explains Jenny Mitcham, the DPC’s Head of Good Practice and Standards who commissioned the report on behalf of the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA).
"Meagan Snow was one of our speakers there and her in-depth knowledge of geospatial file formats made her the ideal author to tackle this challenge. It has been great being able to work with her and our peer reviewers Guy McGarva and Kieron Niven to get this report ready for publication.”
This report is designed as a resource for use by librarians, archivists, and digital preservation specialists who may be new to the realm of geospatial data but want a practical understanding of the geospatial data files they encounter in their collections. It may also be useful to geographers, cartographers, academics, and researchers who are increasingly involved in the preservation decisions around their own research data or mapping products. The report focuses on describing challenges specific to the preservation and management of geospatial data.
This new Technology Watch Report and others in the series, identify, delineate, monitor, and address topics that have a major bearing on ensuring our collected digital memory will be available tomorrow. They provide an advanced introduction in order to support those charged with ensuring a robust digital memory, and they are of general interest to a wide and international audience with interests in computing, information management, collections management and technology.
The DPC is an international charitable foundation which supports digital preservation, and the Technology Watch Reports are just one of the ways it helps members around the world to deliver resilient long-term access to digital content. Additional support in community engagement, targeted advocacy work, training and workforce development, capacity building, good practice and standards, good management and governance help the DPC deliver its vision of a secure digital legacy.
Click to: