You can't make a map without data. A wealth of free and publicly-accessible geospatial data exists on thousands of websites scattered around the world, just waiting to be found and used. But finding the right data for a specific map or analysis requires the knowledge of what geodata websites are out there, and what types of data they each contain. Searching the web can turn up webpages that contain sprawling lists of geodata websites, but such lists are not easily browseable, and are often out of date.Geolode.org is a newly-launched lightweight catalog of geodata websites around the world, searchable and browseable by location, topic, and other tags, so that searchers can quickly focus on the most relevant websites for their geodata needs. An API also provides open access to the catalog's records in JSON format.Geolode's inventory is the collaborative product of a group of librarians and other researchers with many years of experience searching for a wide range of data. We'll talk about how Geolode works, as well as strategies for keeping Geolode up to date, such as harvesting links from all those sprawling lists, and monitoring Twitter for reports of new geodata resources. |