The University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) is a major research institution offering undergraduate and graduate education in the sciences and technology, social sciences, humanities, and arts. Large enough to have excellent facilities for research, study and creative activities, the campus is still small enough to foster close relationships among faculty and graduate students. The total student population is about 19,000 with 2,500 graduate students and 16,500 undergraduates. The faculty numbers more than 900.
The UCSB Library is a major research facility. As a member of the Association of Research Libraries, The Research Libraries Group, and the Center for Research Libraries, it participates in cooperative programs with other major institutions and provides collections and services to the education community. The library has about 2 million books and bound journals. In addition, it has excellent collections of technical reports, government documents, manuscripts and, of course, spatial data material.
The Map and Imagery Laboratory-Library (MIL) is a Library department and an interdisciplinary information facility. Its mission is to provide data and services to the University community. MIL incorporates all forms of spatial information (e.g., digital and analog imagery, maps and databases). The climate-controlled 14,000-square-foot, 5-million item collection is unique among academic institutions for the diversity, quality and quantity of geographic data, and for its laboratory setting of sophisticated equipment to analyze both analog and digital data. Since its opening in 1979, MIL has averaged 25,000 users per year and become the top-ranked academic spatial library in the nation (as noted in a pulbication of the Association of College and Research Libraries). It is the focus for regional and national academic research and instruction in such fields as geography, ecology, geology and oceanography and has hosted seminars and symposia on topics ranging from anthropology to marine science, geology to plant ecology. The facility complements other notable UCSB academic centers such as the National Science Foundation's National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis and Southern California Earthquake Center.
In 1992, a ranking of spatial-data libraries in the Association of Research Libraries (the top 100 research libraries in the United States) placed MIL at number one. Additional evidence of the facility's visibility is its designation as one of three national non-NASA Space Shuttle viewing sites (the Library of Congress and Smithsonian being the other two) and as a United States Geological Survey Earth Science Information Center for California.
MIL's mission is:
It is estimated that $200 million dollars would be needed to replace MIL's five million item spatial data collection. Among MIL's more notable holdings are:
Supporting the collections are micro-browse copies of fiche catalogs from many parts of the world; on-line computer searching of the U.S. Eros Data Center, Johnson Space Flight Center, NASA Ames databases, Internet query via Wide Area Information Server (WAIS) and Mosaic; and on-line searching of many major research library catalogs. MIL often acquires data for our research and student community using File Transfer Protocols.
Laboratory Facilities: Digital systems are comprised of DEC Alpha 4000 and DEC 6310 servers, 4 DecStation 24 bit 5000's, 1 Sun Spark 10; 6 X-terminals, and 3 PC's. Support equipment comprises two CalComp 9100 digitizing tablets, Eikonix CCD 24-bit 4096 line scanner, JVC video scanner; plus 9-track, TK-50/70 8mm and 4mm tape drives. Operating systems are Ultrix, OSF1, Sun and DOS. MIL has an internal TCP/IP Ethernet network and is connected to the campus fiber-optic backbone. MIL's current image processing software packages are ERDAS, TheCore, XV3 and Idrisi; current GIS software packages are ArcInfo/ArcView, and
Atlas GIS; current CAD software is AutoCad: The laboratory also provides non-digital hardware for data analysis. This hardware consists of: Transfer Scopes (mono and stereo); stereoscopes (240Z and AR series); Richards light-tables; Map-0-Graphs; Additive Color Viewer; Hoppman high-resolution viewer; planimeters; drafting tools; and Nikon 35mm Camera systems.
Justification Statement:
The operative concept is visual communication and sharing. Technologies such as that proposed provide a rich enhancement to our students. The urge to map kindles every quadrant of the modern scientific enterprise, just as the idea of a map is everywhere apparent in the need for spatial understanding. In the last two decades changes in modern mapping concepts and technologies have overwhel traditional teaching by providing images of any location on Earth - detailed multi-tiered spatial databases allowing both synoptic and site specific environmental windows - and by providing tools to analyze and interleave many different kinds of data. In short, we find this field redefining itself almost on a daily basis, due in large part to our ability to open a timely window anywhere on the Earth's surface without leaving our libraries, classrooms and soon homes. This capability also obligates us to take on the social responsibility of an informed use of the Earth's resources. Our students, well trained, are our best chance at realizing these goals.
Even with these new and impressive computerized visual tools, we still must interpret and verify these abstract spatial data, combining graphic representations with pragmatic field-derived evidence. Our evolutionary gift of color allows us perception of yet another dimension of information. The availability of brilliantly colored images - map or photographic - is indispensable in conveying the complexity of terrain, for they provide the maximum amount of information in a minimum amount of space. Using a graphic vocabulary, volumes of data concerning a portion of the Earth's surface are succinctly and comprehensibly presented in the form of a graphic. But without the means to share our ideas - presented in this case graphically - these cognitive renderings are as useless as unread books.