Geoskills among academic librarians in Greece, Cyprus and Spain

Abstract

Existing literature on Geographic Information (GI) and libraries points out that American and Canadian librarians have long been aware of the intimate relationship between geospatial data and libraries. In Europe, though, there is almost no literature to this regard, and academic libraries that offer GI services are the exception., Despite the fact that European and National institutions are putting lots of efforts forward for making open data freely available to society, and for supporting full programmes to generate business out of it, this paper examines why libraries and librarians are not perceived as key players in the (geo) data-driven economy. Starting with a survey addressed to academic librarians (in three European countries: Greece, Cyprus and Spain) about their GI knowledge and skills, the paper attempts to shed some light on the librarians’ perception about their role in GI management, and to identify to what extent they are ready for providing GI services to their communities. The ultimate goal of this paper is to serve as a triggering factor to wake up European academic libraries, Librarianship programmers and librarians themselves, to encourage them to look for opportunities in geospatial data management.