I fully agree with the need to provide access to georeferenced data. The question is how to do this. Jim talked about "live services" and "open source". Now, when this refers to an exploration tool such Geonetwork, as described by Robert Zomer, I fully agree. Searcheable digital map libraries are very important and all scientists should be requested to store the results of their work in those libraries. Geonetwork provides the tools the set them up. But, when it refers to "live"services in the sense of providing a user-selected view of the map I am not convinced. Map services are technically very interesting but mostly slow, cumbersome, bandwidth hungry and not very convincing, beyond applications such as finding the best route from A to B. Most of the geodata that needs to be made available are thematic coverages. These should be made available both as GIS file, such that the end user can download them and work locally with the data, and in the form of nice maps in, for instance, PDF format that can be looked at just like a paper map. Both for the downloading and the access no special software is needed.

I fully agree with the need to provide access to georeferenced data. The question is how to do this. Jim talked about "live services" and "open source". Now, when this refers to an exploration tool such Geonetwork, as described by Robert Zomer, I fully agree. Searcheable digital map libraries are very important and all scientists should be requested to store the results of their work in those libraries. Geonetwork provides the tools the set them up. But, when it refers to "live"services in the sense of providing a user-selected view of the map I am not convinced. Map services are technically very interesting but mostly slow, cumbersome, bandwidth hungry and not very convincing, beyond applications such as finding the best route from A to B. Most of the geodata that needs to be made available are thematic coverages. These should be made available both as GIS file, such that the end user can download them and work locally with the data, and in the form of nice maps in, for instance, PDF format that can be looked at just like a paper map. Both for the downloading and the access no special software is needed.