The Delaware Geospatial Information Clearinghouse
What is the Delaware Clearinghouse?
The Delaware Geospatial Information Clearinghouse is essentially three things relating specifically to Delaware geographic information, services, and data.
- a searchable database of documentation (i.e., metadata) about projects, websites, data sets, services, and other types of geospatial information.
- a collection of internet services and web interfaces that allow for searching, retrieving, publishing, and maintaining the geospatial project descriptions (i.e., metadata).
- staff members, this website, and other types of resources that generally promote, support, train, coordinate, and faciliate the sharing of Delaware related geospatial information.
The Delaware Spatial Data Clearinghouse supports the coordination efforts of the Delaware Geographic Data Committee (DGDC), the Spatial Data Implementation Team (I-Team), and the State Mapping Advisory Committee (SMAC). Data and documentation (metadata) have been contributed primarily by State and local government agencies. We welcome and encourage contributions from all data producers – public, private, and individuals.
The clearinghouse provides you, the user, with access to metadata currently published to our clearinghouse, information on current metadata standards, instructions on how to publish metadata, and tools for creating metadata. To understand more about what metadata is, please see our "Metadata Basics" page.
Who runs the Delaware Clearinghouse?
Research & Data Management Services (RDMS), Information Technologies, at the University of Delaware currently hosts and maintains the Delaware Clearinghouse. This includes the servers, web services, publisher accounts, software, and all metadata content. RDMS, along with the Center for Applied Demography and Survey Research (CADSR), also at the University of Delaware, helped develop the initial Delaware Clearinghouse in 1996.
Technology
The core of the Delaware Clearinghouse is the ArcIMS Metadata Server. Metadata web services produced by ArcIMS allows ESRI ArcGIS users to publish and maintain their metadata directly from their desktop. Metadata content and indexing tables are stored in Oracle RDBMS with the aid of ArcSDE. The Delaware Metadata Explorer (DME) is a Java Server Page (JSP) application. All of the metadata server components utilize SunONE Web Server technology.
History
Since 1996, the State of Delaware has actively participated in the nationwide effort to provide better documentation for geospatial data. As a part of this effort, members within the State of Delaware have developed the Delaware Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) as a node for the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI).
The initial release of the Delaware Clearinghouse in 1996 was the final product of an NSDI Competitive Cooperative Agreements Program (CAP) grant. The National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) Competitive Cooperative Agreements Program was established by the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) to help form partnerships with the non-Federal sector that will assist in the evolution of the NSDI. This program provides funding for cooperative agreements to State and local government agencies, institutions of higher education, and private organizations. The goal is to encourage resource-sharing projects through the use of technology, networking, and more efficient interagency coordination. Two units within the University of Delaware, Center for Applied Demography and Survey Research (CADSR) and Research & Data Management Services (RDMS), worked together to establish a clearinghouse node and implement a strategy for populating metadata holdings that adhere to the Content Standards for Digital Geospatial Metadata.
Since the intial grant in 1996, the University of Delaware members have remained active participants in the FGDC CAP grant program. The funds from these grants have helped to populate metadata entries in the Delaware Clearinghouse, to educate the Delaware geospatial data community how to create and submit metadata entries, and to provide OpenGIS map services.
Future Directions
The Research & Data Management Services plan to remain a key proponent of the NSDI. RDMS will continue to update and maintain the Delaware Geospatial Information Clearinghouse and serve as an informational contact for the Delaware geospatial data community.