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Guidelines
for Finding GIS Data
Geographic data can come from a variety
of sources, including your own database files and spreadsheets.
Many federal, state and local governmental agencies make their GIS
data available to the public. Commercial vendors also
provide GIS data. Please conduct your own data search by following the guidelines below
before consulting Branner staff.
| Guidelines
for Finding GIS Data |
| Step
1: |
Search
Socrates to find GIS datasets available in Branner Library.
Add "geographic information systems" or "GIS"
to your keyword search. |
| Step
2: |
Explore the links
we've collected for online GIS data sources.
These include links to vector and raster data at local to
international scales. |
| Step
3: |
Crawl the Web
with search engines like Google.
Syntax Examples:
" GIS hydrology Mexico"
"faults
California .shp"
" population India .e00" |
| Step
4: |
Search several
GIS support mailing list archives at the following web
sites:
- Directions
Magazine A collection of all postings to the most popular GIS
discussion lists.
- ESRI
Support Center
Users often send requests
for GIS data sources to these lists and then
post summaries of their findings.
|
| Step
5: |
Post your own query
to one of the above GIS lists. Be sure to have done the keyword search
of the list archive first. |
| Step
6: |
Consult
the Branner GIS Staff for help in locating data. |
Always check for the following:
- Are the spatial data in a GIS software
format: i.e. Shapefile (.shp), Geodatabase or Arc/Info (.e00)?
- Are the spatial files' map
projection parameters defined? Does the projection
match that of your other data?
- What is the scale of the spatial
data? Does it match your other data?
- At what summary level are the tabular
data (county, block group, state, etc)?
- How recent are the data?
- What were the sources for the data?
- What are the copyright requirements?
- Is there metadata associated with
the data?
Last modified:
March 16, 2006
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