A workshop
was held October 12-14 in Washington D.C. on the topic of digital gazetteer
information exchange. The workshop was planned by a group representing
the Alexandria Digital Library, the National Geographic Society, the
Smithsonian Institution, and a set of federal agencies including the
U.S. Geological Survey, the National Imagery & Mapping Agency, and
NASA. Participants came from a wide range of communities from U.S. federal
and state governments, commercial and academic organizations, and international
organizations.
The
goals of the two-day workshop were to (1) develop an understanding of
the potential of indirect spatial referencing of information resources
through geographic names and (2) to identify the research and policy
issues associated with the development of digital gazetteer information
exchange.
The
highlights from the workshop include acknowledgement of the immediate
opportunity and requirement to coordinate the building of shareable
digital gazetteer data in the interest of digital earth applications;
the importance of the temporal aspects of gazetteer data; and the need
for a gazetteer service protocol to support distributed gazetteer services.