Looking for free data?
Acquiring Electronic Geospatial Data
Map and Geography Round Table ALA Annual, July 8, 2000
By Melissa Lamont
| Good places to start:
Well organized and well maintained sites with extensive links |
| Guide to mostly free online and mostly free US geospatial
and attribute data, Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies, University of Arkansas www.cast.uark.edu/local/hunt |
| Map Library, Clark University
maplib.clarku.edu/links.html |
| Infomine, Scholarly Internet Resource Collections,
University of California, Riverside infomine.ucr.edu/search/mapssearch.phtml |
| NCDC Online Climate Data,
National Climatic Data Center www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ol/climate/climatedata.html |
| NODC Data Access, National Oceanic Data Center
www.nodc.noaa.gov/General/access.html |
| Center for Global and Regional
Environmental Research, University of Iowa www.cgrer.uiowa.edu/servers/servers_geodata.html |
| Locations for downloadable
data: Good compilations or value-added US government produced data and some international data |
| Ciesin www.ciesin.org Center for International Earth Science Information Network, Columbia University Includes data from the US Census, Mexico, China, the World Bank and the World Resources Institute Also provides a search page for simultaneous searches of several important databases |
| GIS Data Depot www.gisdatadepot.com Brings together data from a number of sources, primarily US government data Even the US state section is primarily Digital Chart of the World, or STATSGO (US Department of Agriculture Soil Conservation Service State Soil Geographic) Extensive FGDC metadata available |
| Directions Magazine www.directionsmag.com/datacenter Published by the founder of Wessex Users submit data to share Downside -- very little metadata available Has some cool stuff, British population by postal code, chart of the brightest stars, etc. |
| UNEP/GRID grid2.cr.usgs.gov/data/download.html United Nations Environmental Program, Global Resource Information Database International data including Asian and African administrative units and demographics Includes some metadata Access though an online form - must provide name, e-mail and use for the data |
| USGS Geographic Data Download edc.usgs.gov/doc/edchome/ndcdb/ndcdb.html The major USGS data sets |
| NNDC Climate Data Online cdo.ncdc.noaa.gov/plclimprod/plsql/poemain.poe US and international data |
| Worth a look: |
| US Census www.census.gov/ipc/www/idbnew.html Statistical tables with demographic and socio-economic data for nations and regions |
| USGS Global Land Information System
edcwww.cr.usgs.gov/webglis Points to metadata, data and descriptions Data sometimes online, others must be ordered |
| Global Change Master Directory, NASA gcmd.gsfc.nasa.gov Easily navigated and good search capabilities Global change defined broadly Some data online, mostly metadata for data to order Extensive list of links to other earth science data sites |
| NOS MapFinder mapfinder.nos.noaa.gov/default.html Title is somewhat a misnomer, the system indexes some data Located digital bathymetric data here |
| University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
www.ucar.edu/fac_data/data-resources.html Includes a number of international scientific datasetes, primarily climatological Also, a set of links to other sources of scientific data |