The virtual map library: Providing access to Ordnance Survey digital map data via the WWW for the U.K. higher education community

Abstract

For a number of reasons Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) are under increasing pressure to provide staff and students with access to digital map data. This comes at a time when many academic map libraries, the traditional map service provider, are having to cut costs and are therefore unable to fund the move to digital map provision. With funding from the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) Electronic Libraries (eLib) Programme, staff on the Digimap Project 2 2 The Digimap Project is supported by the JISC eLib Programme, the Data Library at the University of Edinburgh, and the Ordnance Survey. within the Data Library at the University of Edinburgh are looking at the concept of a virtual digital map library. A demonstrator service has been developed that allows individuals to browse a map database comprising Ordnance Survey (OS) digital map products, to produce hard copy output and to download data files to import into other software. Data is held centrally at the University of Edinburgh and access takes place over the World Wide Web (WWW) via a Java applet. In this paper we discuss the background to the project, describe the service and some of its features and conclude by looking at some of the issues that have arisen during the design, implementation and use of the service.