NCSU Libraries Focus Online

Volume 22 number 1 - Fall 2001

By Carolyn Argentati, Public Services

The NCSU Libraries, chosen from more than 60,000 organizations worldwide, has received an award recognizing its accomplishments in geographic information system (GIS) technology from the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI). This international award recognizes GIS user sites around the world for outstanding work in the GIS field. The award ceremony took place in July at the Twenty-first Annual ESRI International User Conference in San Diego, California, the largest gathering of GIS professionals in the world. According to ESRI President Jack Dangermond, the Special Achievement award honors an elite group of organizations that have embraced GIS technology to better serve the world. I am especially proud of this year's recipients. Their contributions to society through GIS are phenomenal, and their accomplishments have set new precedents throughout the GIS community.

A geographic information system is a computer-based tool for mapping and analyzing objects and events. It combines the power of a database with the visualization capabilities offered by maps. Businesses, schools, governments, and organizations use GIS in an enormous range of applications, as GIS provides the power to solve complicated problems, experiment with scenarios, and present new ideas with cogency. With ESRI leading the way, GIS has surpassed the geographic analysis and mapping methods of the past and is quickly revolutionizing information technology across the globe. The NCSU Libraries, which is being honored for its outstanding accomplishments in the field of GIS technology, provides students, faculty, and staff with online access to GIS data resources and offers users technical support, training, and workstation access. The library has offered GIS services since 1992. These services support more than thirty academic departments and are used in park management, forestry, soil studies, education, and landscape architecture. The Libraries also was one of the founding sixteen members of the Association of Research Libraries' GIS Literacy Project.

The library offers a series of free in-library GIS workshops and maintains a subscription to ESRI Virtual Campus, an online service that allows campus users to enroll in free, self-paced, online training in any of ESRI's twenty different GIS courses. The Libraries' GIS also has an online collection of several hundred Web pages containing geographic data such as digital aerial photography, topographic maps, local government geodata, and other digital mapping sources. During the 2000-2001 academic year, the library's spatial data collection expanded by 312 gigabytes. A vast amount of North Carolina local government data was acquired through multiple statewide partnerships, including a partnership with University Extension.

Steven P. Morris (Data Services) leads the library's GIS Team, with the assistance of James Jackson Sanborn, data services librarian. Other GIS Team members are Mary Ellen Spencer (Research and Information Services) and Carolyn Argentati (Public Services). Information about the NCSU Libraries' GIS program is available on the Web at http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/gis/.