The National Archives has joined Geospatial One Stop’s (GOS) web portal. Select National Archives holdings are now searchable from the GOS Historical Collections Channel, which the National Archives and the Library of Congress jointly manage.
This new channel grants unprecedented access to data across a wide number of categories and format types, including administrative and political boundaries, environmental information, ocean and coast maps, and data files. Assistant Archivist Michael Kurtz praised this new union and promised to work with partner agencies “to make the GOS Historical Collections Channel the first place that the historical geographer will want to go.”
The Historical Collections Channel enables the National Archives to provide broader access to unique historic documents in its custody. National Archives holdings include maps and other kinds of data with a geographic component, and the agency regularly receives transfers of digital cartographic data from other agencies. This new partnership greatly facilitates communication and sharing of geographic data and resources between government agencies and the public.
Dr. Kurtz heads the National Archives Geospatial Data Initiatives Team. Comprised of staff members from cartographic, electronic and special media, modern records, policy and web design areas, this group manages National Archives activities on GOS. Other libraries and federal agencies have joined the newly-launched Historical Collections channel. The National Archives encourages others to participate on the site as well.
