19th International CODATA Conference
Category: Data Archiving - The InterPARES Project

The Cybercartographic Atlas of Antarctica, and Related Archival Issues

Dr. D. R. Fraser Taylor (fraser_taylor@carleton.ca), and Tracey P. Lauriault, PhD Candidate
Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre (GCRC), Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Carleton University, Canada


Cybercartography is "the organization, presentation, analysis and communication of spatially referenced information on a wide variety of topics of interest and use to society in an interactive, dynamic, multimedia, multimodal, multisensory and multidisciplinary format" (Taylor, 2003). The Cybercartographic Atlas of Antarctica (CAA) is one of two products that merge both research and practice. Major participants include the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research and a number of Antarctic database and stakeholder nations, such as China, Germany, Australia, U.K., U.S.A, Argentina, Belgium, Chile and Poland. A key component of the project is archiving the information created. Archiving challenges include archiving new forms of information in multimedia and multimodal forms. Also, archiving has not been a major concern for many of the participating data bases. Additional challenges include archiving in a distributed open source format and interoperable development using the Open GIS Consortium (OGC) approaches. Furthermore, scientific data pose accuracy, reliability and authenticity questions which are well defined in geospatial metadata standards but less so in multimedia and multimodal contexts. These often conflict with definitions and terms in archival research. While data archival issues pose challenges, a greater concern is the increase in the creation of digital atlases of all kind where there is little forethought by creators regarding preservation and in the case of the Antarctic Atlas, there is no one nation at the moment that has the capacity to preserve an Atlas of this type. Antarctica is the continent of science, yet a global knowledge resource representing scientific data to a broad range of users may not be accessible in a few years. The presentation will discuss these issues, the Atlas as a case study with IP2 and other related archival issues.