EDINA newsline
March 2010: Volume 15 Issue 1
On 20 January 2010 EDINA held a celebratory event to mark the tenth anniversary of the launch of the Digimap service. Digimap has become a widely recognised and used resource for many teachers and researchers throughout Higher and Further Education; the anniversary event showcased Digimap past, present and future, with a number of interesting speakers and exciting demonstrations.
Peter Burnhill, the Director of EDINA, opened the day with a brief history of the service and was followed by a joint presentation from JISC Collections and JISC on how Digimap fits into the JISC vision of resource provision. Under the title “Digimap Past and Present”, there were three very different presentations from Digimap users: firstly, the long view from John Moore, map librarian at the University of Glasgow, who has used Digimap since its inception as an eLib Programme project in 1996; secondly, an award-winning engineering undergraduate project presented by Dr Ian Ferguson of the University of Strathclyde; and thirdly the practical application of Digimap by a research scientist, Jonathan Radcliffe from the University of Cardiff.
After lunch, EDINA staff were on hand to give demonstrations of new and forthcoming developments within both the Digimap Collections and other EDINA geo-data services. The future of Digimap was presented and discussed in the afternoon session, beginning with an overview of what EDINA will be working on next, followed by a session discussing possibilities for the future of geospatial information delivery by all four Digimap data suppliers: Ordnance Survey, Landmark Information Group, SeaZone Ltd and British Geological Survey.
Finally, Vanessa Lawrence CB, Director General and Chief Executive of Ordnance Survey, gave a thought-provoking keynote address to celebrate ten years of collaboration between Ordnance Survey, JISC and EDINA.
The event finished, as all birthday parties should, with the cutting of a delicious birthday cake. We look forward to celebrating similar success in ten years’ time!