Proceedings of the Seminar on Electronic Atlases II held at Charles University, Prague, July 31-August 2, 1996, and at the 28th IGU Conference, The Hague, August 8, 1996

Summary

The visible opening and closing materials of Electronic Atlases II describe proceedings from ICA seminars held in Prague and The Hague in 1996. The editors identify expanding Internet access and its use for atlas communication as the principal development since the 1993 Visegrad seminar. The contents cover electronic atlas production, Internet-based design and delivery, school-atlas functionality, multimedia navigation metaphors, and national atlas reports. Examples include China’s electronic National Economic Atlas, Japan’s electronic national atlas, Canada’s Internet atlas, Dutch web-production experience, and the US Census Bureau’s planned data access and dissemination system. In the opening contribution, Bengt Rystedt describes electronic atlases as combining data and software for exploration, multimedia for educational and public use, and GIS functions for national or regional analysis; Internet delivery and national spatial data infrastructures introduce possibilities for virtual atlases. The foreword records plans for a practical guide for electronic atlas producers and the creation of a commission website. In the closing excerpt, Timothy Trainor calls for shared strategies and tangible results for users of the US National Atlas. The appended programmes document presentations and demonstrations, including approximately thirty electronic atlases displayed on five systems in The Hague. These excerpts establish the meetings’ scope and priorities without providing the intervening papers’ detailed arguments or results.