The Digital South:

A Spatial Data Library

Collaborators:

John Blackburn, Head, Instructional Technology Group (ITG)

Mark Rush, Department of Politics

Hugh Blackmer, Science Librarian

Skip Williams, Research and Academic Technology Specialist

Washington and Lee University

Overview

This Digital South proposal represents the confluence of interrelated projects at Washington and Lee University that have been underway for several years, integrating agendas of information fluency, emerging digital libraries, and teaching with technology. The basic problem addressed by Digital South project is the need to collect and distribute a broad range of electronic media which are finding their way into teaching and learning, including images, spatial data, text, and other materials that are on the horizon of library collections. We conceive of the Digital South as a distributed resource, shared by members of the ACS and available to Internet users everywhere, constituting (1) a growing digital adjunct to campus library collections of traditional print materials, (2) a means to distribute the scholarly work of ACS institutions to a global audience, (3) an integral part of the emerging National Digital Library, and (4) an easily accessible resource for use in enhancing teaching and learning.

These components address the full gamut of concerns of the ACS Information Fluency Initiative: end users must develop research and data-handling skills across a growing range of information media, institutions must build collections to support the evolving needs of teaching and learning, and library and computing staff must create the infrastructure for delivery of effective and timely logistical support and training. We emphasize a search for 'best practices' on other campuses, development of collaborations among ACS members, and sharing resources and facilitating exchanges where feasible.

Librarians, faculty and technologists at Washington & Lee have been experimenting with many facets of digital information technologies, and have a number of ongoing projects funded by ACS, Mellon Foundation, and W&L. The projects include:

Ø John Blackburn and Mark Rush 2001, 2001 ACS Teaching with Technology Fellowship: “GIS Applications in Politics: The 2000 Redistricting in Virginia.” This entailed the development of course materials and technological applications for a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) course on the redistricting process, using 2000 Census data. The goal of the course is to expose students to the literature and research on voting and redistricting and then allow them to undertake a redistricting project on their own, using ArcView GIS software.

Ø John Blackburn and Mark Rush 2002, ACS Teaching with Technology Fellowship “GIS Applications in Politics: Redistricting and Beyond.” An expansion of the previous year’s work, we augmented the GIS applications this year and introduced the students to a more powerful redistricting package (AutoBound). We also introduced the students to applications of GIS in other aspects of social science research and added spreadsheet work to enhance their capacity for independent GIS analysis.

Ø Hugh Blackmer and Skip Williams have used ESRI’s ArcIMS software to develop a number of prototypes of interactive spatial data delivery and linkage with text and image databases (see http://ims1.wlu.edu). Early results were presented at an ACS-funded GIS symposium at University of Richmond in November 2001, and led to the successful Information Fluency proposal described below under Supplementary and Supporting Initatives.

Our success in these undertakings and discussions with faculty and staff at other ACS institutions have inspired us to expand our efforts.

Our use of GIS software in the redistricting course illustrates the analytical power that can result from encouraging students to explore real data. In this course, freshmen and sophomores used cutting-edge software to analyze, manipulate, and visualize what would otherwise be an overwhelmingly complex set of data. Students analyzed the impact of existing and past legislative district plans and drew new, alternative plans using multimember districts (See course website at: http://miley2.wlu.edu/redist/). This sort of activity is at the very heart of information fluency and addresses the necessity to incorporate a growing range of media with practical training in research and teaching.

While we are now able to make some of our data accessible via the web, we now conceive of a collaborative project that would entail the collective efforts of ACS institutions in the development and management of a library of spatial data from all aspects of the liberal arts.

We therefore seek funding to plan for a robust digital library of spatial data relevant to Southern states. The planning will entail several related activities aimed at a comprehensive plan for developing an archive of spatial data covering the ACS member states and, ultimately the nation and the world. But this cannot be done at just one institution. We therefore propose to plan and organize a team composed of colleagues at several other (but not necessarily all) ACS institutions with whom we could work to develop an ACS-wide spatial data consortium. To this end, we propose several short-term planning initiatives.

Our Summer 2002 planning process has two main components. First, we will develop a limited capacity website that would provide access to Virginia Census and redistricting data used and developed in Rush and Blackburn’s course. This site will be a prototype that demonstrates the nature, utility and accessibility of the spatial data we have thus far processed. This data can be used to explore the decennial redistricting process and will be available for free use and exchange by students and faculty from all ACS schools. The dataset includes:

1. Census 2000 population data and geography that we have processed into a format compatible with standard software

2. additional data in spreadsheet format comprising electoral and turnout data that can be merged with the GIS data or analyzed independently

3. Geographic polygons (shapefiles) and accompanying summary data of the different legislative districting plans that were proposed as alternatives to the plans eventually passed into law by legislatures last year.

Second, we will expand our present contacts with other ACS institutions (described below under Supplementary and Supporting Initiatives) to determine which colleagues and which departments are best positioned to serve as part of the team that would move this project from the planning stage into the first stages of implementation. This would entail email and telephone contact as well as short term travel to demonstrate what we have thus far accomplished both in terms of classroom instruction and website construction.

Our goal for the first phase is to write a detailed proposal for a more comprehensive planning process for developing and maintaining a Digital South data library, suitably broad in scope for submission to funding agencies.

This planning process will allow us to document an interim strategy for implementing the ACS-wide spatial data library. We anticipate that this next phase (possibly in the Fall and of 2002) will entail:

1. additional travel to identify and enlist potential team members at ACS institutions;

2. meetings with team members from selected ACS institutions to determine their institutional capacities and willingness to commit human, technological, and physical resources to the development of the ACS-wide data library;

3. detailed planning in the form of a white paper and design document for the next stages in the development of the Digital South.

4. continued processing of census and other relevant data for the remaining southern states.

Supplementary and Supporting Initiatives

Hugh Blackmer and Skip Williams participated in a meeting of GIS users from six ACS campuses at University of Richmond, and subsequently received funding under the Information Fluency Initiative for visits to a number of other ACS campuses to assess the feasibility of collaborative construction of a distributable spatial library (proposal at http://home.wlu.edu/~blackmerh/acs/acs6xiib.html). Visits to Sewanee, Furman and Davidson in March led them to rethink the initial plan for collaboration, but underlined the widespread interest in GIS and common need for support. Collaboration with University of Richmond is under discussion, and a further round of visits to ACS partners is planned for winter 2003.

While Blackburn and Rush will focus on this survey and research work, Blackmer and Williams, under the auspices of a research project funded by the Washington and Lee R. E. Lee Summer Research Fund will have student programmers building a prototype of a suite of communication and data‑sharing tools for a consortium of four universities working on environmental issues in the Brazilian Amazon (proposal at http://home.wlu.edu/~blackmerh/relee/brazil.html). Some of this development effort will produce Web‑based GIS tools easily adapted to the needs of the prototype Digital South project.

John Blackburn will attend the Frye Leadership Institute in June of 2002 and then take up as his 12-month practicum the writing of a case study of the integration of GIS software and data into library and computing functions at Washington and Lee. With his long-term focus on the issue, Blackburn’s involvement in the Digital South project will integrate and enhance his Frye practicum.

Hugh Blackmer will be on sabbatical leave during the Fall term, visiting the campuses of a dozen liberal arts institutions in New England, exploring a broad range of digital library issues and seeking collaborators for subsequent developments (proposal at http://home.wlu.edu/~blackmerh/sabb/26xi.html; two‑year plan at http://home.wlu.edu/~blackmerh/sabb/0203plan21i.html). The Digital South prototype and the various ArcIMS projects showcased at http://ims1.wlu.edu will serve as worked examples.

In addition, Washington and Lee has allocated $20,000 for FY 2002 – 2003 for a Web/File Server and accompanying software for exclusive GIS project use. This is a welcome, late-breaking piece of news and represents a huge leap forward in our ability to provide robust server-side support for GIS.

Timeline, Budget and Funding Request

This initial planning process will run from June through September 2002. We are requesting funds as a summer stipend for the project in the amount of $10,000 to be divided equally among the four collaborators.