Promoting Innovative Opportunities in Map and Geography Libraries through Research Data Management

Research data management (RDM) offers map and geography libraries an opportunity to further market the potential for their collections to serve as research data. The American Geographical Society Library (AGSL) and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Library offer digitized and undigitized historical photograph collections. Historical images, particularly those highlighting environmental landscapes of current geographic interest, offer the potential to more deeply engage with a pressing trend, concern, or concept. Using the DataONE Data Catalog, a platform providing access to open data from several research institutions, I contextualize a sampling of these historic photographs alongside present-day data sources from fieldwork in similar landscapes, focusing on the topics of glaciers and glacial landscapes, natural disasters and hazards, and deforestation. This research technique is made possible through RDM techniques of metadata, open data, and open access. Historic images as research data alongside fieldwork methods are used by physical geographers (as well as geographers in a variety of sub-specialty areas) in “repeat photography” projects which seek to compare temporal trends across landscapes. I aim to both empower further engagement with map and geography libraries, as well as demonstrate how the marketing power of RDM may highlight these innovative scholarly opportunities within these establishments.