GIgateway Newsletter

GIgateway™ Newsletter - April 2004

Our apologies for the delayed release of this April issue; we have been so inundated with work due the release of MetaGenie and the close of a financial year that we've only now had the time to update you. Hopefully it was worth the wait! - Best wishes from the Information Services Team.

MetaGenie - A Success!

As the MetaGenie rollout continues to gain speed, we are tracking use and sector takeup of the software. As readers of the GIgateway™ newsletter, we felt that you might be interested in who our users are. This graph depicts our very recent calculations.

Hand in hand with this take-up will be training and awareness in the fundamentals of metadata creation and best practice. See the article below...

Update on Metadata Fundamentals Training

The first of our Metadata Fundamentals training sessions has been booked. The first will take place in London on Friday 11th June, with sessions being held at least weekly up until July 6th. The training will then recommence later in the year during November, and into the first quarter of 2005.

This training will be offered free of charge and places are therefore limited. Registration will be on a strictly first come, first served basis, starting week commencing May 10th and although we are initially targeting local and central government personnel, we would welcome requests from other interested organisations so please do get in touch if you wish to register and we will do our best to accommodate you. Any questions please email Louise.

To register, please email your preference for one of the following venues by clicking on the appropriate link and stating whether you would prefer to attend a morning or an afternoon session:

London I - Fri 11th June
London II - Tues 15th June
East of England (Cambridge) -Thurs 17th June
London III (Central Gov't personnel only) - Thurs 24th June
South West (Bath) - Tues 29th June
South East (Windsor) - Thurs 1st July
West Midlands (Coventry) - Tues 6th July

Please note that these dates refer to the first wave of training only. We will be travelling to all other regions including Wales and Scotland to carry out training later in the year and into 2005. Watch this space for updates.

Welcome to Theresa!

AGI welcomed its newest addition to the team on April 13th. Theresa is the new part time Information Services Assistant and will therefore be the first point of contact for many of you who contact the AGI regarding the GIgateway™ service. Theresa's main responsibilities are assisting the GIgateway™ team in administrative duties, maintenance of the GIgateway™ website and database, and providing general office support for the wider AGI team.

MetaGenie Monthly Tip

I have metadata that does not fit into any of the categories on MetaGenie. What do I do with this information?

This is where the "User Defined Fields" tab comes into use. This allows you to enter facets of the data that do not fit neatly into any of the pre-defined GIgateway categories. So if you want to store details of Ecclesiastical Parishes, television regions or ISDN references, then this is the place to store them.

To enter your user-defined data enter the name (e.g. "Ecclesiastical Parish") and the value (e.g. "St John's") in the appropriate boxes.

If anyone has their own hints and tips that they would like to share with other MetaGenie users then please send an email to info@gigateway.org.uk.

A Banner Year for GIgateway™

Our financial year ended on 31 March. All endings and beginnings involve reflecting on what has ‘flowed under the bridge’ and what rapids may await ‘upstream.’ As GIgateway™ slowly moves into gear with the rollout of MetaGenie, we were astonished at the strides we made during 2003-04. Consider the following:

The number of visits to the GIgateway™ website was targeted at a 10% increase over the previous year. In fact there was a 25% increase in site visits. What we are seeing is a public recognition of the value of geographic information and an evolution of GIgateway™ from not simply a metadata service, but a portal for all things geographic. We were pleased to see this progress.

The number of users of the data locator service was targeted at a 10% increase over the previous year. In fact there was a 52% increase in the number of users. This affirms the core principles of GIgateway which is to provide the documentation (metadata) of existing datasets which allows data to be shared. Again, we were gratified to see this positive indicator of worth.

There have now been a full 200 downloads of MetaGenie. Please Note!!!: Installation of MetaGenie involves a commitment to publishing your metadata on GIgateway™. Everyone who is using the software has been contacted by us and will need to provide dates and other appropriate information as to when their metadata will be available. Please contact Robert Turner to make arrangements for setting up your node. Call us before we call you!

Two additional nodes were added to GIgateway™ this year and an additional 101 records were added as a result. The average uptime of the gateway itself as housed at EDINA is now in the range of 99.99%.

We are making progress.

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GIgateway™ - Association for Geographic Information - Block C, 4th Floor - Morelands
5-23 Old Street – London - EC1V 9HL
Tel: 020 7253 5211 / Fax: 020 7251 4505 / info@gigateway.org.uk