Legal considerations in the dissemination of licensed digital spatial data.(American Geographical Society Library )

ABSTRACT

State and local governments increasingly license digital spatial data, the dissemination of which by academic libraries requires specific legal and operational considerations to reconcile license conditions with public access. We examined this in the context of the American Geographical Society Library (AGSL) at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee during 2000-05. Wisconsin open records law protects the right of access to public records, and geographic data is intended to be in the public domain. Despite this, Wisconsin counties have dramatically increased their use of licenses for geographic data, and the use of these licenses has never been challenged under Wisconsin open records law. The AGSL negotiates existing licenses, conveying to users the licensing conditions and reassuring the data producers. We developed user sublicenses including copyright statements, original licensor's names, and signed user agreements to the terms of the original licenses. Each user agreed that failure to comply with these terms would result in disciplinary action. For security reasons, all licensed data were delivered on CD-ROMs, which incorporated the licensing information, forced users to sign the sublicense, and insured discussion of the licensing issues. To insure consistency, we developed policies and procedures to be followed for each type of data request. We also provided to faculty members and students instruction sessions dealing with data availability and acquisition.

INTRODUCTION

Digital geographic information is among the most rapidly growing components of many academic libraries (Kinikin & Hench, 2005). One sector of this information--licensed digital spatial data--presents specific opportunities and problems for librarians. Although the situation in each individual library will reflect its size, the nature of its collections, and its mission, certain issues are universal, including legal considerations. Freedom of information laws at the federal level and open records laws at the state level influence access to digital spatial data. Here, we examine these issues in the context of the American Geographical Society Library (AGSL) at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) during the period 2000-05, when we held positions there as digital spatial data librarians.

THE AGS LIBRARY

The AGSL is a unit within the UWM Libraries and is one of the largest geographical collections in the world. The library contains over one million items, including maps, charts, atlases, globes, photographs, monographs, periodicals, and digital spatial data (AGSL, 2006). The last of these, which includes both electronic statistical and geographic data, is of growing importance to and is increasingly used by UWM faculty and students. The number of electronic files distributed by the AGSL increased by 3,601 percent from 2000-01 (1,026) to 2004-05 (37,974). Over the same period, the number of data CD-ROMs and DVDs burned increased 364 percent, from 119 to 552 (AGSL, 2005).

UWM has a conspicuous Geographic Information Systems (GIS) community that supports the library in its role as a campus data center. A campus-wide interdisciplinary GIS council was formed in 1990 in the early stages of GIS development at UWM, and anyone interested in GIS is encouraged to participate. The council includes representatives of the UWM information technology (IT) department, librarians, research scientists, and faculty and students from academic units including architecture, urban planning, geography, civil engineering, anthropology, urban studies, business, and economics. The AGSL is the main campus unit that actively collects and archives digital spatial data files on behalf of the UWM GIS community.

Serving a wide range of disciplines and user groups requires that the AGSL collect a wide range of digital spatial data. These data are inherently diverse in terms of origin, format, and geographic and temporal coverage. Data formats are raster (for example, digital orthophotography, satellite imagery, and Digital Elevation Models [DEMs]), vector (such as Computer Aided Design [CAD] drawing files or GIS vectors) and tabular (statistics and attribute files). Geographic coverage ranges from global to county or city level, even as localized as a quarter-quarter-section. Time ranges may be continuous (for example, the Milwaukee real property master files since 1975), irregular series, or one-time snapshots. Data producers include federal, state, and local governments, educational institutions, nonprofit organizations, and commercial enterprises.

DATA TYPES

The AGSL's digital spatial data collection is dominated by three categories of information: research data, public registry and administrative data, and commercial data. These are the data types most frequently requested by patrons.

The research data is primarily information collected by federal government agencies for their own purposes. In general, primary users of research data are government agencies that use the data in policy making and administration. Secondary users include academics, the general public, and commercial interests, which may repackage and market the data (Eechoud, 2004). Research data is attractive to GIS users because it is widely available, in the public domain, and useful in a broad range of applications (Eechoud, 2004). U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Geological Survey datasets typify this category and serve general or scientific research purposes. They contain no private information, and the data is presented at a relatively small scale.

The AGSL also holds state and local government research datasets and directs patrons to relevant Internet sources. For example, current Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WDNR) digital spatial data are available at the WDNR Web site (www.dnr.state.wi.us/maps/gis/geolibrary.html) and archived data files are available in the AGSL.

Public registry and administrative data constitutes the foremost category of data requested in the AGSL. Public registry and administrative data is that collected by governments for specific legal and regulatory purposes, such as monitoring or regulating public and private activities like collecting taxes or regulating discharge of hazardous substances (Eechoud, 2004). This information includes land registry or cadastral data, law enforcement data, zoning permissions, and derivative land information such as street center lines with complete addresses.

The advantages of public registry and administrative datasets are numerous. They are geographically accurate (that is, data are created at large scale with high precision) and are updated frequently. Moreover, longitudinal (time-series) data may be archived for the entire area of interest. However, public registry and administrative datasets are not always accessible, or access may be regulated by legislation such as privacy…