29 June 1999
HAB to Bob Whyte

Hi Bob,

Just back from the Inaugural Symposium at Southwestern, and I'm 
starting to think about some possibilities for future workshops 
in the realm of GIS (Suzanne handed out Proposal forms and said she 
expected to see something from each of us...).  I don't know how 
much of this ground you and other interested persons have already 
been over, but I'm wondering about (1) exploration of consortial 
site licensing for ArcView, (2) possible schemes for archiving and 
sharing spatial data, and (3) a couple of possibilities for 
issue-focused workshops a year or so from now.  Some of the issues 
in what follows are general, rather than primarily environmental, 
and some reflect simple ignorance on my part. I don't know how 
widespread GIS expertise and usage is on ACS campuses, but at 
Washington & Lee it's been limited to one professor in geology, 
though I've been working with ArcView for the last 9 months.  If others have 
already thought all this out, my apologies for bumptiousness --I'm an 
enthusiast, not by any means a GIS expert yet. Others may be much 
further down the road to effective deployment and use than we are. 

(1) GIS only becomes a practical tool when users have ready access to 
the necessary software, and in the consortial arena it seems that a 
common package is a necessity.  ArcView looks to me like it's that 
package, though I'm doubtless prejudiced by the fact that it's what 
we have (at last, on a campus-wide site license, though the getting of 
that is a grisly tale of more than 6 months of shadowboxing and 
hassle). ArcView is arguably the industry standard for entry-level 
users (though other vendors aren't in agreement on that point), 
and its big brother ArcINFO is lurking in the background for heavy 
lifting.  I gather from those who did the negotiating with ESRI that 
every deal is a marathon, and that ESRI isn't used to working with 
small colleges.  I suspect that consortia are even less familiar as 
customers.  Has somebody from ACS explored this license issue, with 
ESRI or other vendors? For purposes of the Southwestern facility and 
the initial workshop, it might be worthwhile exploring ESRI's library 
program (which allows multiple copies of the software, so long as 
they are confined to the physical setting of the library), unless 
Southwestern already has a site license.

(2) GIS is a realm in which reinvention of wheels is all too easy, and 
it seems to me that a consortium like ACS has a glorious opportunity 
to do things RIGHT if we can plan a common strategy before leaping. 
A lot of work is done with base maps in various forms (geoTIFFS, DEMs, 
TIGER files, etc.), and it would be wonderful to have a common data 
archive --so that it wouldn't be necessary for each institution to locate 
and purchase the base map of Japanese counties, or US hydrography.  
Maps created by additions to base maps could likewise be shared, so 
that the archive would grow into a multidisciplinary resource. Organizing 
such an operation poses some interesting challenges: ?a single server at 
one ACS institution for collection and distribution of GIS data? 
?large files (20 MB is not uncommon for some formats) duplicated at 
the several institutions?

(3) Most uses of GIS technology are analytical, but the real interest 
of GIS in the context of liberal arts education lies in its 
pedagogical potential. The basics of making and editing maps are not 
too difficult to learn and teach, but integrating maps into the 
classroom is a more complicated matter, and supporting student 
creation of maps still more demanding. Two specific contexts interest 
me especially, and might be the basis for separate workshops that I'm 
intending to propose: (1) GIS and Global Studies, and (2) GIS in the 
teaching of history.  The former is resolutely interdisciplinary, 
addresses a gap in the curriculum, complements work in Environmental 
Studies which is already supported by ACS, and bids fair to unite the 
interests of people in the sciences and the social sciences.  The 
latter is aimed at a discipline that _should_ care greatly about maps 
and _could_ make all sorts of uses of electronic resources. 

A general question: is there an ACS working group on GIS issues in 
addition to the set of environmental folks to whom you sent the GIS 
Workshop message?  Seems to me that there ought to be, as the 
technology starts to be used beyond the sciences.

Hugh Blackmer
Science Librarian
Washington & Lee University