Geospatial Librarian

Summary  This post describes a technique for scraping Portal Discovery Metadata from a custom site and merging it with Standards Documentation Metadata in accompanying XML files. The example portal used is PASDA , but this could be modified for other repositories. Background The BTAA GDP aggregates metadata to provide a catalog of geospatial resources from public data providers.  There are generally two types of sources for the metadata: Portal Discovery Metadata : This is found within the data provider's portal application and may include minimal elements, such as title, date, description, and links.  Several structured data portal applications, such as ArcGIS Hub and Socrata provide this through their API as DCAT.  Other portals, such as CKAN, have APIs that expose the Portal Discovery Metadata in a custom schema.   Standards Documentation Metadata : This is a file that accompanies the dataset and includes much more detail, such as ...

January saw the third annual Geo4LibCamp , a hands-on "unconference" meeting to share best-practices, solve common problems, and address technical issues with integrating geospatial data into a repository and associated services. Geo4LibCamp2018 Attendees This year’s event, hosted at Stanford University, included nearly 50 attendees from 26 academic institutions and organizations.  Highlights from Day 1 included the Keynote Address from the always inspiring Stace Maples, who described how the Stanford Geospatial Center has been able to aid international public health projects, and the plenary panel, Getting started and keeping momentum , with speakers from five institutions that have successfully set up geospatial repositories and/or discovery applications. The featured speaker on Day 2 was none other than David Rumsey himself, who provided a wonderful walk through of the history of the San Francisco Bay area with maps ranging across hundreds of years. Rumsey als...