Abstract

The increased proliferation and accessibility of geographic data are changing the landscape of services based on geographic information. From the analysis of recent job offers posted in American university libraries, we discuss what could be the role of the information professional in this new context, with respect to the management and dissemination of geographic data collections, looking for synergies for mutual benefit between academic libraries and their information professionals and the geographic data community that uses geographic information systems (GIS). In fact, this activity would be one more among the data curation or data sets preservation tasks needed currently in many disciplines.

Abstract

This article is a case study of the application of geospatial technologies in an academic library. More specifically, two applications were developed to assist users in finding the location of books, one for Android mobile devices and the other for web browsers. These applications provide users with the ability to plot the path from the point where the user is located to the shelf where the items are found, thereby improving the user experience. Additionally, this article investigates the possibility of applying geographic information systems (GIS) and geospatial technologies to library services.