Resumen de GIS and the Academic Library: A Survey of Libraries Offering GIS Services in Two Consortia

Camila Gabaldón, John Repplinger

• This paper summarizes the results of a survey of academic libraries in two consortia (the Orbis Cascade Alliance and the Oberlin Group) to determine the extent of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) implementation and characteristics of libraries that had implemented these services. Of the 103 libraries surveyed, 31 had already implemented GIS services and an additional 15 were considering its implementation. There were significant differences in the implementation rate between public and private institutions. Average materials budget was also higher for those libraries that had implemented GIS than those that had not.

  Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has provided users with new ways to process, analyze, and present information, resulting in a new era of spatial information management. According to Wikipedia (2006), GIS is a technology that "integrates, stores, edits, analyzes, and displays geographically-referenced information." The combination of a graphical display and its associated datasets in an interface that allows for manipulation has had an impact across almost every discipline, from the obvious, such as geography, to less likely fields such as the humanities. The ability to display physical attributes so that they are associated with their spatial locations has changed not only the way in which the attributes can be viewed, but also the opportunities available for analyzing them and for creating new connections. This is particularly important for the university library, which serves as an information hub for the entire campus and must maintain an interdisciplinary collection that provides relevant information to all of its users, regardless of their academic discipline.

  Both authors of this article have an active interest in GIS, inspired by previous coursework and influenced by exposure to GIS in library settings. Currently, each of our libraries is either considering or offers some level of GIS, so both of us are interested in the possibilities and the pitfalls. By creating a dataset of the libraries in our consortia that are interested in GIS, we are establishing the basis for support and mutual collaboration on a broad scale.

  GIS is a natural example of how libraries are using existing and new data to help their users find information. It has been a reoccurring topic in librarianship for more than a decade, yet much of the discussion on this topic focuses solely on the complexity of implementing this service. With this focus in the literature, we were curious about the common characteristics of libraries that have chosen to implement this service.

  This article is the result of a survey of libraries in two academic library consortia, the Oberlin Group and the Orbis Cascade Alliance, to determine which libraries have implemented or are considering implementing GIS, and to identify similarities and differences between them. We examined characteristics such as size, materials budget and type of institution (public or private). We then compared GIS services offered and searched for trends or characteristics of libraries offering GIS.