Re: CivicAccess-discuss Digest, Vol 7, Issue 40 - Bob & Marcel
Posted by
Tracey P. Lauriault-2 on
Jun 02, 2006; 7:07pm
URL: http://civicaccess.416.s1.nabble.com/Re-CivicAccess-discuss-Digest-Vol-7-Issue-40-tp643p655.html
Fantastic Marcel!
One of my optimistic/utopic dreams - data access dreams that is - is to
extend the dli (Data Liberation Initiative) and other academic data
access infrastructures to public libraries, school boards, and
community groups. I know that this would require additional hardware,
software, and peopleware resources in cash strapped institutions but
alas, i wonder what role the librarians (map, data and reg) +
archivists can play within their associations to push for the extension
of some of the excellent knowledge agreements already in place?
What do you & others think? am I delusional on a sunny Friday
afternoon after hours of looking into the metadata policies of science
data portals? I feel a little light headed but alas is this an
angle/strategy/solution to explore?
cheers
T
ps-when i started uni but a few years ago, there was only US data to
work with. And i look forward to those links.
Marcel Fortin wrote:
Thanks Tracey,
You're right, we definetly do have a long way to go in the public realm,
but, on the academic side, we have also come a long long way. When I
started at the U of T in 1999, we had access to maybe 2 or 3 Canadian
geospatial datasets taking up roughly about 1 gig of space mostly taken
up by one orthophoto set). In 2006, I have access to probably over 100
Canadian geospatial datasets taking up over a terabyte of space, without
counting the free Canadian data on the web. Again, most of this is of
course through academic licensing, but I think things will progress for
the general public as well. That's my hope at least. Maybe I'm too
optimistic? I imagine everyone else on this listserv has hope
considering the existance of the civicaccess group and listserv.
I will try and add links and other docs as you request in your message.
Marcel
Tracey P. Lauriault wrote:
Marcel;
I partially agree with you, we do have much to celebrate, however, after
having spent thousands of dollars on data to do some quality of life
indicator work at the scale of the city, and trying to do some
demographic analysis of my neigbhourhood and some school catchment
areas, i feel we have a long way to go for the average citizen - not the
specialist - getting easy and free/no cost access to some useful data.
Having said that, Marcel, would you be so kind as to look at our
resources page and see if there are additional resources we can add
there? You could just post them to the list if you like or put em up on
the wiki. That would be really great! http://civicaccess.ca/wiki/Resources
So, a failure? I don't think so. I think we have to build on some of these
successes and not try and compare ourselves to the U.S. too much.
The federal government is not oblivious to the fact that data are mostly
free in the US. In many cases federal and provincial hands are tied because
of Crown Copyright and licensing policy, or they think their hands are tied
See Werschler's "Dissemination of Government Geographic Data in Canada :
Guide to Best Practices" at
http://cgdi-dev.ccrs.nrcan.gc.ca/publications/Best_practices_guide/Guide_to_
Best_Practices_v12_finale_e.pdf
Our data cultures are different and we can't change that overnight.
i added this ref doc to the wiki here -
http://civicaccess.ca/wiki/Politiques
The Association of Canadian Map Libraries and Archives (ACMLA) along with
the Canadian Association of Public Data Users (CAPDU) have worked hard at
negotiating data deals over the years.
I've added the orgs here -
http://civicaccess.ca/wiki/Organizations/Organismes
if you have some good refs, fire em over and I will get em listed!
What we in the ACMLA have done is
demonstrate the need for their data, how they can be used (something they
don't always know), and how we intend to use them. The most effective
argument we often have, however, is the ability to demonstrate to them a
similar deal with another organization (this also works with industry). The
strategy is often used at the provincial and local level. I realize again
that these are academic deals but it does demonstrate the power of
negotiation and communication and the usefulness of building on past
successes.
Marcel
_______________________________________________
CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
[hidden email]
http://civicaccess.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss_civicaccess.ca
_______________________________________________
CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
[hidden email]
http://civicaccess.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss_civicaccess.ca