A mid-March 2026 update

Over the past year, the Geo4Lib community has continued to grow and take shape through regular meetings, collaborative discussions, and community sprints. I wanted to share a brief update on some of the topics and projects our community has been discussing over the past several months, along with a reminder about our biggest upcoming event.

Community Catch-Up: A recap of recent meetings

Services & Platforms

One of our recurring topics is geospatial library services and how institutions support users working with spatial data. We explored the concept of user stories to better understand how our work impacts researchers & students, and we shared ideas for gathering feedback on how geoportals and datasets are actually being used in practice. We also discussed different institutional models for providing geospatial services, including reviewing insights from past Geo4LibCamp sessions.

Data Formats

Two recent meetings focused on geospatial data formats. One discussion examined the creation and use of PMTiles, a single-file tile format that can serve as an alternative to traditional web services such as GeoServer. Another meeting explored the best formats for long-term archival storage, weighing the pros and cons of GeoPackage, Geodatabase, Shapefile, and GeoParquet.

Projects & Community Updates

The Allmaps team joined us to share updates on their work, including a new IIIF partnership, improvements to their georeferencing tools, and plans for long-term project sustainability. We also received an update on the Big Ten Academic Alliance Geospatial Information Network’s new metadata API, designed to host OpenGeoMetadata records and support a new version of the BTAA Geoportal. Plus, we regularly do informal round robins of community member project updates.

Consider joining us at our next meeting!

GeoBlacklight Sprint Summary

GeoBlacklight developers and contributors held a virtual development sprint in January 2026 to focus on software improvements, documentation, and future planning.

The sprint resulted in the release of GeoBlacklight v5.2.0 and the start of development on GeoBlacklight v6, which will support Blacklight v9 and improve performance and asset generation. Another major focus of the sprint was improving the GeoBlacklight documentation, including implementing versioned documentation so users can easily find guidance tailored to the specific version of the software they are running.

For a full recap of the sprint and development updates, check out the GeoBlacklight blog post.

Mark Your Calendars! Geo4LibCamp 2026 Registration is OPEN!

Registration is now open for Geo4LibCamp 2026, hosted this year by the University of Texas at Austin from June 8–12, 2026.

Geo4LibCamp is our flagship annual community event. It is a hands-on gathering for anyone interested in how libraries manage and support the use of maps and spatial data. Participants typically include map librarians, metadata specialists, application developers, geospatial professionals, and educators. The main focus is to share best-practices, solve common problems, address technical issues, and plan for the future of geospatial librarianship.