Georeferenced Libraries: expansion of services in the Cloud for Congress and community

Abstract

The Chilean Library of Congress began to work with geographical advisory services and territorial issues around the year 1996, based on the implementation of a Geographic Information System (GIS). Continued advisory services provided for Deputies and Senators generated a great many digital maps and cartographic representations, which could not be organized in the manner of a traditional library which are usually created to catalog texts.

So, after a first effort to distribute georeferenced data and maps throughout the Congress community, a second effort was made to make the large amount of digital maps produced available to that community. Although, the Library then had a wide range of live maps based on GIS server technology, it lacked a way to divulge and share its desktop-ready products, related to geographic analysis and thematic mapping.

In the 2014, the Library published its Mapoteca website (repository of digital maps), with the aim of becoming a new source for navigating the extensive and cumulative work in this area, so as to provide parliamentarians and their staff access, everywhere and at all times, to the previously requested or available thematic maps related to a law bill. This service involves depositing and managing georeferenced data in the cloud, gradually replacing the production of paper maps with customized and web-available digital products.

This paper discusses the demands involved in extending the services of a Georeferenced Library and shows a way to increase the distribution of products through the community, exploring new technologies and keeping in mind a balance between budget constraints and excellence in standards of service. Moreover, it delineates the future of the process, related to increasing the quantity of e-maps produced, standardizing production, and implementing a new workflow for the publication of digital maps based on desktop work, driven by the demands of Congresspersons.