## What will I find here? In this repository, you will find geospatial datasets and associated project data related to the research, teaching, and learning activities of the Harvard Map Collection. The Harvard Map Collection partners with students, faculty, staff, and researchers on a number of activities which result in the creation or augmentation of geospatial data. These activities include: - Partnering with faculty as [course librarians](https://mapping.share.library.harvard.edu/posts/re-wilding-2024/) to provide GIS instruction and technical consultation on student projects - Supporting individual researchers by way of [1:1 consultations](https://library.harvard.edu/libraries/harvard-map-collection) - Funding student research directly through Harvard Library grants, such as the [May Crane](https://library.harvard.edu/may-crane-fellowships) or [Pforzheimer](https://library.harvard.edu/grants-fellowships/pforzheimer-fellowships) fellowships - Supporting paid student learning through in-house Map Collection projects ## What is the purpose of this project? The Harvard Map Collection is interested in providing instructional support and technical platforms for archiving GIS project data for the following reasons: - Capturing project data may extend a project's usefulness, both for the researcher who may wish to provide transparent, citable works, and for future researchers who may wish to repurpose the data. - Learning how to describe project data and methods is a standard offering in the Harvard Map Collection's suite of GIS instruction. Maintaining a repository of well-described and discoverable project data from different disciplines is useful to researchers getting started. - In addition to providing GIS instruction, the Harvard Map Collection stewards a special collection of over 500,000 historic maps, and is interested in preserving associated data created by researchers working with collections. ## Why is the data stored on OSF.io? The Harvard Map Collection uses OSF, or the Open Science Framework as a platform for storing researcher-created data for the following reasons: - OSF has a commitment to open science - OSF can accommodate many data types, including common spatial data formats - OSF supports versioning for project data and other associated materials - Projects are optionally given DOIs, to support publication workflows - OSF analytics help researchers understand where their project data is discovered and how it's used - The OSF interface supports instant contribution, and does not require substantial on-boarding, as compared with other collaboration tools, such as Github - OSF, however, does integrate with Github, and many other [storage add-ons](https://help.osf.io/article/395-storage-add-ons) - OSF supports working or in-progress collaboration, as compared with tools which may be better suited for depositing at the end of a project, such as Dataverse - OSF allows researchers to deposit and store their own data, which the library can point to from search interfaces, such as the [Harvard Geospatial Library (HGL)](https://library.harvard.edu/services-tools/harvard-geospatial-library)