Desirable Characteristics of an Online Data Commons for Spatially Referenced, Locally Generated Data from Disparate Contributors

摘要

A significant body of spatially referenced, locally produced data in small isolated collections exists on the hard drives and backup systems of individual researchers, nonprofit groups, private associations, small companies, universities, and nongovernmental organizations across the United States. From a practical perspective, that data currently is unavailable to professional scientists and to the general public. If there were an online environment where that data could be deposited or registered and readily found, what infrastructure characteristics might potential users find desirable for them to be willing and interested in finding, consulting, and using such data? While there are major national and international initiatives such as the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) that are providing a gateway for access to millions of spatially referenced datasets, primarily from national government data sources, a similar gateway to access spatially referenced, locally produced datasets from disparate private and nonprofit sources has yet to emerge. If one or more were to emerge, what characteristics should be incorporated into the design to make it useful to users of the portal or gateway? Based on data-preservation literature, this study posits three potential characteristics as desirable: make conditions of use of data files clear to potential users; provide a variety of ways to search for data; and enable users to access comments and feedback from prior users, and add comments of their own. These three characteristics were examined because they often are not provided or inadequately provided in general-purpose portals for finding geographic data and services. A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods was used and the results of the analysis using both methods support the hypothesis.