visualizing data on demand!

The National Geophysical Data Center makes available large amounts of data, divided into sub-sections based on terrain and source: land, marine, satellite, snow & ice, and solar-terrestial. The NGDC is part of the US Department of Commerce, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, the National Environmental Satellite, and the Data and Information Service. The goal of NGDC is “is to be the world's leading provider of geophysical and environmental data, information, and products.”

The NGDC seems to be a good model for digital curation, and for a repository that makes accessible the datasets in their holdings. NGDC currently contains over 400 databases (digital and analog) from many sources, and users of these data sets include researchers, private industry, government agencies, universities, as well as the public.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the NGDC is their “Visualizing Data” section. This area of the site makes available a selection of images based on datasets in the collection, and furthermore, “can produce custom images, on request, for many of our databases.” This really amazes me! That the NGDC is not only providing datasets (for free!) but also offering to work with users of the sets to create useful images derived from these sets makes it an excellent example of providing data, and the tools to visualize that data.