This is the Geo-Search interface where users can search for datasets in the repository by defining an area of interest - note the choice of map background can be changed – we actually have to pay Google for the mapping because we're accessing it behind a login – free mapping is not always free! We can also do some complex spatial querying for datasets so that we get the results we are looking for.
This is the interface shown when a user has uploaded a dataset. The uploaded dataset is validated using open source data translation software which identifies the format and extracts the bounding coordinates of dataset. This information is then automatically added to the datasets metadata record and used for subsequent searching.
ShareGeo has been developed as a geospatial data sharing facility within the EDINA Digimap suite of services that is accessible to all registered Digimap users – currently there are about 40,000 active users of Digimap throughout UK academia including students and staff, at over 160 institutions. A key element of the other data collections available through Digimap is that they provide access to licensed geospatial data from major data providers such as the Ordnance Survey and BGS for use in academia under licensing terms which also apply to derived datasets.
The current statistics for ShareGeo look like the following: there are fairly high numbers of logins and users and number of datasets downloaded – the most popular datasets have been downloaded up to 30 times, however there have not been very many new datasets voluntarily deposited – most have been added internally by EDINA staff or transferred from the old GRADE repository.
With the publish process complete and the new dataset now appearing in ShareGeo Open, Susan can provide her colleages at the council with the persistent identifier for the metadata description and download link for the data. So this is a made up story. But ShareGeo Open is real, and we’re hoping that combined with the desktop plugin this sort of workflow described here is how ShareGeo Open could see data deposits increasing.