Forging Partnerships: Foundations of Geospatial Data Stewardship

Geospatial data stewardship fosters user-driven collection, management, access, reuse, and preservation of location-based data. Academic and research libraries are poised to be at the center of geospatial data stewardship, working with partners to develop a sustainable, geospatial data stewardship hub. This article argues for the essential role of libraries in leading collaborative partnerships to develop a user-driven, spatial data infrastructure that includes people, policies, standards, community perspectives, and operational workflows. The emerging model of partnership-based spatial data infrastructure described at the Washington University Libraries demonstrates working methods in practice.