Getting a Grip on Research Data Management

In March 2021 the Tri-Agency released its Research Data Management Policy, including its three pillar requirements. This article reviews some key points from the Alliance RDM (Portage Network) workshop "Putting the Tri-Agency Policy into Practice: Workshopping Your Institutional Research Data Management Strategy."

ACMLA Membership 2021 List

List of members of the ACMLA, 2021

Esri UC2021: reporting from the world's biggest GIS event

In this issue of GIS Trends we review the Esri User Conference (July 12-15, 2021), offered for a second year as a virtual event.

News Related to the Association of Canadian Map Libraries and Archives

News about the Association, including AGM minutes, Awards and Carto Conference abstracts

University of Manitoba GISHub

This review provides an outline of the solution the University of Manitoba Libraries has implemented to integrate their ESRI Educational Site License. In looking at the tools available the project came to encompass the following:1. Semi-automated management and integration of UM ESRI site license using campus authentication methods2. Discovery and access point for proprietary and open researcher data3. Secure local environment for active-use geospatial datasets using ArcGIS EnterpriseThe following discusses the software specifics, use cases, and lessons learned in a Canadian academic library context.

Spatial Analytics Dashboards: Assisting Researchers to Select the Appropriate Tool

This review provides an overview of the following popular spatial analytics dashboard software: Tableau, PowerBI, ArcGIS Insights, ArcGIS Operations Dashboard and covers optimal use cases for each. Also included is a curriculum for an introductory one-shot instructional session on data literacy and research visualization using Operations Dashboard for ArcGIS in an academic library context.

Visualizing Kitchener: Geocoding Historical Street Information

When studying and investigating the history of a property or neighbourhood, common resources often sought by researchers include air photos, fire insurance plans and historical maps. These will provide information about what an area looked like, often offering the building’s footprint and surrounding landscape. Timespan studies will no doubt show growth, development and possibly changes to the buildings of interest. But what the rich resources don’t tell the researcher is information about the people connected to those buildings. Who lived or worked there? What did they do for a living? Did they move often? Did they change jobs regularly? These types of questions can’t be answered with just maps alone as they require a detailed census to go along with it. To fill this type of need, Geospatial Centre staff at the University of Waterloo Library embarked on a massive-scale digitization and geo-location city directory project – one that had started in 2019, has involved at least 40 staff members, and still has a couple years to go before completion. This paper will summarize the project thus far, with a focus on the journey of geocoding historical streets.

GitHub and Jekyll for Publishing GIS Workshop Content

In this article, we describe GitHub in simple terms and demonstrate its practical value as a platform for delivering workshop instruction. This article stems from a virtual pre-conference workshop we delivered at the 2020 annual meeting of the Western Association of Map Libraries (WAML). We describe an easily replicated workflow for publishing workshop materials and documentation to the web using GitHub Pages and provide a GitHub repository that readers of this article can copy and customize to suit their own workshop needs.