Policy for Adding Data to the MIT Geodata Repository

1. Contact us: Contact the MIT Libraries GIS Specialist (gishelp@mit.edu) and explain what data you would like evaluated. Please note that you will need to provide the data as well as the descriptive information about the data (metadata). The GIS Specialist may have competing requests and if you need to reformat and describe the data the process may be time consuming. Please allow a month for the entire process.

2. Data Evaluation: The data will be reviewed by the GIS Specialist to check that it is an appropriate addition to the collection and that the license agreements are appropriate for educational use by the MIT community. All data layers loaded into the Geodata Repository must have linked tabular and spatial boundary data. A common acceptable format is ESRI shapefile (.shp). Tabular data such as DBASE, Excel, Access, and comma delimited text files, must be joined with an appropriate gis boundary file, by the person requesting to load the data, before it can be added to the MIT Geodata Repository. Any data loaded to the MIT Geodata Repository will be available to the MIT community through the password protected GIS log-in system. If you have tabular data Social Science data without geographic boundaries it may be more appropriate for Harvard-MIT Data Center (HMDC).

3. Metadata: Data sets stored in the Geodata Repository have corresponding FGDC metadata files that describe the data, its accuracy and attributes, when it was created, etc. Information contained within the metadata file, such as attribute keywords, is used by the MIT Geodata Search Tool, and therefore necessary to find the data layers located in the Repository. Anyone interested in storing files in the Repository will need to ensure there is a metadata file, which follows FGDC standards, for each layer to be loaded. The MIT Libraries GIS Specialist will not be responsible for the creation of FGDC files, but will assist users in the creation of standard FGDC records in ESRI's ArcCatalog. If the GIS Specialist agrees the data should be loaded, you will provide the GIS Specialist with the dataset along with the FGDC metadata file.

4. Data Loading: Once data and metadata are appropriately formatted the GIS specialist will load the data into the repository and contact you to let you know when it is complete.