The Harvard Geospatial Library
Name:
Bonnie Burns
David Siegel

Position:
HGL Project Manager
HGL System Developer

Affiliation:
Harvard College Library, Harvard University Library

E-mail:
bburns@fas.harvard.edu
hgl.harvard.edu

Address:
Harvard Map Collection, Pusey Library, Cambridge, MA 02138

Software/coding used:
Custom Java and JSP applications, ArcIMS 4, ArcSDE 8, Oracle 8i

Hardware used:
Sun E250, Compaq Windows 2000 Server

Description:

The Harvard Geospatial Library is a catalog and repository of geospatial data held in Harvard University Collections. With its map interface and text search tools, HGL allows users to find data relevant to their topic and in their geographic area of interest. Search by place, by topic, by title, by author. A "shopping cart" allows the users to save data that is relevant to their research, and either download it or use it on-line in the HGL "Data Exploration" page. The Exploration page lets the user combine layers from a variety of sources to construct a map that fills their needs, without having to worry about projections, since HGL can project on the fly. HGL also includes a gazetteer with over 7 million place names to assist users in finding specific places. Hundreds of layers are currently available through HGL from the entire Digital Chart of the World to detailed building footprint layers for Boston and many surrounding cities, with Tiger 95 and Tiger 2000 to come on-line in the next few months. While the primary focus is on digital data, in the next year the HGL catalog will also allow users to find paper maps held by the Harvard Map Collection.