The TPAC Digital Library: A Web Application for Publishing Large Catalogs of Earth Science Data

The Tasmanian Partnership for Advanced Computing (TPAC) has developed a rich web-based application that publishes large catalogs of scientific datasets. The TPAC Digital Library provides a user interface for viewing, searching, and accessing the catalog data collections, as well as enabling data services for user access. The product also provides management functions for librarians of digital data collections. The search features allow files to be selected graphically based on geospatial extent, or by file name, variable name, attribute value, and by tag. Alternatively, there is a file manager style interface that provides a direct route to the data. The interface is specifically geared towards discovery and access of earth science data files, which makes it intuitive and easy to navigate. Files can be downloaded, or accessed through OPeNDAP, GridFTP, WCS, Matlab and other interfaces. The digital library can harvest metadata from THREDDS, Hyrax, IPCC catalogs and other instances of the digital library. The product is freely available under an open-source license, and is currently deployed by a small but active user base. It has existed since 2005, and remains under constant development by TPAC and other contributors (including the Australian Bureau of Meteorology). Current development initiatives will allow interoperability with library service protocols, as well as other data archive organizations and scientific bodies for data reference transparency. There is a project in progress that will allow the data collection’s owner to attach attribute information, access rights, and meta-data to the data collection to conform to various user community and service standards. Future releases will allow publishers to attach media rich information about the data collection, as well as additional information about scientific results, and papers and web pages that reference the data collection. The presentation will discuss the current implementation, and future directions.