Michael Shensky
GIS & Geospatial Data Coordinator
University of Texas at Austin
In 2019 the University of Texas Libraries successfully completed development of its new Texas GeoData portal (https://geodata.lib.utexas.edu/) which has been designed to enhance discoverability of the geospatial data contained in the Libraries extensive collections and facilitate use of these datasets in geographic information system (GIS) software. The technical work for this project was carried out in an Agile development environment by a team of UT Libraries Information Technology developers who worked in coordination with a diverse stakeholder group with a mix of technical, administrative, and collection content expertise. Together this project team was able to overcome a variety of data processing, metadata aggregation, and interface customization challenges by developing a robust system architecture comprised of both open source (GeoBlacklight) and proprietary (ArcGIS Server) software products. These applications were carefully integrated to allow the Libraries to provide access to its datasets in the widest possible variety of formats while still adhering to open standards, utilizing open technologies developed by the university library community, and leaving open the ability to integrate the portal with additional systems in the future. This presentation will discuss how this new portal ties into the broader ecosystem of UT Libraries collections content and research data services, and will offer insight into the lessons learned while developing its underlying infrastructure.