NSF Digital Gazetteer Workshop

[Tom Moritz]

Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1999 07:29:53 -0400
Reply-To: bcarroll at infointl.com
Sender: Digital Libraries Research mailing list
<DIGLIB at INFOSERV.NLC-BNC.CA>
From: Bonnie Carroll <bcarroll at infointl.com>
Subject: Announcement: NSF Sponsored Workshop on Digital Gazetteer
Comments: cc: "Hodge (E-mail)" <Gailhodge at aol.com>
To: DIGLIB at INFOSERV.NLC-BNC.CA
In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.19990720164020.00b1ee60 at smtpmail2.nlc-bnc.ca>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
X-UIDL: 12b3b62430881e0b2acbce1a8901ac7f

THIS MESSAGE IS BEING SENT TO MULTIPLE LISTS. WE APOLOGIZE FOR ANY
DUPLICATION.
---------------------------------------------
July 20, 1999
Digital Gazetteer Information Exchange Workshop
October 12-14, 1999
Washington, D.C.
NSF-sponsored as part of the Digital Government Initiative
***************** NOTICE ***********************
Attendance is limited and will be selective to assure a balance of areas
of interest among the participants. If you would like to put your name
on the list of potential participants, please send your name, title,
organization and other contact information, along with a statement of
your interest in the topic of the workshop, to
mullen at alexandria.ucsb.edu.
************************************************
A workshop will be held to develop a research and development strategy
for gazetteer data exchange and gazetteer services in support of the
Digital Government Initiative of the National Science Foundation (NSF).
NSF funding has allowed us to convene this Digital Gazetteer Information
Exchange (DGIE) workshop and invite the participation of key national
and international individuals who are users or producers of gazetteer
data, who use gazetteer data as a component of their research, or who
are interested in digital gazetteer design and implementation at the
research level.
The DGIE Workshop will be held in Washington, D.C. on October 12-14,
1999. A reception will be held at the National Geographic Society on the
evening of October 12th (Tuesday 6pm - 8pm) to begin the event. The
workshop sessions will be held at the International Center of the
Smithsonian Institute (Wednesday, 8am - 6pm, and Thursday, 7:30am -
5pm). A description of the workshop can be found at the DGIE Workshop
web
page: www.alexandria.ucsb.edu/~lhill/dgie/DGIEworkshop.htm.
Briefly, the focus of the workshop is on the role of gazetteers as a
mediating
asset for the U.S. Digital Government Initiative (NSF). The workshop
will (1) develop an understanding of the potential of indirect spatial
referencing of information resources through geographic names and (2)
identify the research and policy issues associated with the development
of digital gazetteer information exchange.
We believe that this is the first time that the applications and
implications of gazetteer data for indirect geospatial referencing for a
broad range of information services have ever been the focus of such a
meeting. By gazetteer data we mean digital files that relate feature
names and types to coordinates. With a georeferenced gazetteer, a user
can start with a geographic name and find information that is either
described with that geographic name or described with coordinates
representing an overlapping geospatial area. Use of this powerful
indirect geospatial referencing tool can be applied as a common approach
to a wide range of resources (e.g., libraries, bibliographic files, data
collections, web resources, and museum and specimen collections) and can
be particularly useful across language barriers since coordinates are
universally understood.
A digital gazetteer supports the following functions:
1. It answers the "Where is" question with a map reference; for example,
"Where is Santa Barbara?"
2. It translates between geographic names and locations so that a user
can find information through matching the coordinates of a geographic
name to the coordinates of the geospatial objects.
3. It allows a user to locate particular types of geographic features in
a designated area. For example, the user can identify an area on a map
and find the schools, hospitals, lakes, or volcanoes in the area.
We expect to have 60 people participating in the workshop, with balanced
representation from
- gazetteer producers
- digital library developers
- librarians
- geospatial data center staff
- georeferenced clearinghouse and information infrastructure staff
- museum staff
- researchers whose activities create or use georeferenced place/feature
data (e.g., biodiversity, geography, ecology, geology, epidemiology,
natural history, culture)
- computer scientists
- information science researchers
As a participant in the Workshop, we will ask you to (1) provide a short
biographical statement for the Participants Directory, (2) contribute a
short statement about gazetteer issues prior to the workshop which will
be posted online, and (3) fully participate in the workshop. Sessions
are being organized where you may also be requested to give a short
presentation.
Attendance is limited and will be selective to assure a balance of areas
of interest among the participants. We expect to complete the selection
of participants by August 15th. If you would like to put your name on
the list of potential participants, please send your name, title,
organization and other contact information, along with a statement of
your interest in the topic of the workshop, to
mullen at alexandria.ucsb.edu.
Linda L. Hill, Principal Investigator
Research Specialist, Alexandria Digital Library Project
University of California, Santa Barbara
lhill at alexandria.ucsb.edu
Desk: 805-893-8587
Fax: 805-893-3045

Michael Goodchild, Co-Investigator
Associate Director of the Alexandria Digital Library Project
Professor and Chair of Geography at UC Santa Barbara.
good at geog.ucsb.edu