EuroSDR archiving working group

Principal: Jonathan Holmes

Status: Closed

Objectives

Geographic data has been subject to archiving in the form of maps for centuries. National Archives in most countries have an interest in preserving information about geography. While the preservation and curation of paper maps is well understood and put into practise, archiving of geographic data in digital form is still in its infancy. Dependencies between datasets, complex data models, metadata, web service and a reliance on specialised software to retrieve and view historic datasets are topics that influence strategies, standards and technologies related to digital geographic data archiving.

This working group brought together Librarians, Archivists, Researchers and National Mapping Agencies (NMAs) to discuss digital archiving issues and publish a best practice guide for NMAs and ther interested bodies

Publications
The group has published the paper “GI+100: Long term preservation of digital Geographic Information — 16 fundamental principles” as agreed by National Mapping Agencies and Archives for consultation with the NMA and Archive communities. The digital version of the document is available here.