[Talk-is] Geographic Names of Iceland's Glaciers in the OpenStreetMap.org database

[geoinfo at comcast.net]

Sæll og blessaður Daníel: 



Thank you very much for your e-mail to me and my friend and colleague, Oddur Sigurðsson.  I must admit that I had never heard of the Icelandic OpenStreetMap community and its parent OSM global project.  It is certainly a wonderful idea to provide geographic data gratis to all users.  Many government mapping agencies have been "Reaga nized," that is, they have been "privatized" to the extent that there work is no longer funded as a "public good," such as general base maps of a state or nation but have to be purchased at a "market" price.  Look at what happened to Landmælingar Íslands as it metamorphosed from a public institution to a quasi-private one, to the detriment of mapping of Iceland.  That is why OSM is a refreshing departure from the trend.  Good for you. 



Now to address your specific questions with respect to Geographic Names of Iceland´s Glaciers: Historic and Modern (USGS Professional Paper 1746; see also http://pubs.usgs.gov/prof/1746/ 



All of the text in 1746 is in the public domain; virtually all of the maps, aerial photographs, and satellite images are also in the public domain.  The United States Government does not copyright its publications.  The reason for this is that public tax dollars were used to produce the publication; therefore, all such information is available to the public at the cost of reproduction and mailing or other form of distribution.  Therefore, all of the text and most of the figures are not copyrighted and available without cost.  It would be appreciated, however, if the source of the information used by OSM credits Oddur Sigurðsson (Veðurstofa Íslands) and Richard S. Williams, Jr. (U.S. Geological Survey) as the sources.  



The clause about copyrighted material on the back-title page refers only to material used in 1746 that was from a copyrighted source, so those sources would have to be contacted to reproduce their copyrighted material.  Here is the list of such figures in 1746: 



Fig. 1B, p. 4, Gróðurmynd (from Landmælingar Íslands) 

Fig. 8, p. 27, Landsat image (from Canada Centre for Remote Sensing, although no copyright is shown, so it is probably all right to use. 

Fig. 27, p. 60 SPOT image (from SPOT Image Corp.) 

Fig. 29, p. 62 IRS image (via Landmælingar Íslands, although no copyright is shown, so it it probably all right to use. 

Fig. 37, p. 68 SPOT image (from SPOT Image Corp.) 

Fig. 139, p. 149 Landsat image (from Canada Centre for Remote Sensing, although no copyright is shown, so it is probably all right to use. 



The names of the glaciers in 1746 are all glacier place-names; there are no "sub-glaciers" as you call them.  Thet are ice caps, outlet glaciers, cirque glaciers, valley glaciers, etc.  The reason that many of the glacier place-names are not generally known by Icelanders is that many are not easily visited in Tröllaskagi og nágrenni, but the main reason is that Landmælingar Íslands and their former mapping partner, Defense Mapping Agency (aka, NIMA, now NGIA), did not consider glacier place-names of any great interest.  A good example of this fact is in the case of Drangajökull, the ice cap in Vestfirðir, which has five named outlet glaciers, three of which are surge-type glaciers.  No map produced by Landmælingar Íslands shows any names of these outlet glaciers!  One of the main reasons that Oddur and I undertook the publication of 1746 was to bring these names to the attention of all Icelanders, with the expectation that the names would be placed on all maps published in Iceland or by scientists working on the glaciers of Iceland (Icelandic and non-Icelandic) subsequent to the publication of 1746.  For a nation that has great pride in its geographic place-names for historical and literary reasons (e.g., Jökulsá á Brú in Hrafnkels saga F reysgoða ), it´s always been a bit of a mystery that so many of the glacier place-names have been "missing" from maps of Iceland.  Another reason that Oddur and I undertook the challenge of finding all of the glacier names in the literature and on maps was to clear up confusion about which name to use for a specific glacier.  As you know, modern Hofsjökull was known by that name by Norðlendingar and by Arnafellsjökull by Suðurlendingar.  The correct name of the outlet glacier in eastern Mýrdalsjökull is Kötlujökull, not Höfðabrekkujökull, which is the name of the jökulhlaup deposits formed from a Kötluhlaup across Mýrdalssandur and named for the Höfðabrekkujökull farmstead. 



The geographic coordinates for each of the glaciers listed in 1746 were supplied by Oddur.  He also has a GIS database of the outlines of the glaciers.  Therefore, you need to get in contact with Oddur for any additional information you may need to fulfill your obligations to the OSM collaborative project.  We are happy to help you in any way we can.  At the moment, Oddur is recovering from abdominal surgery and will be recuperating at home for several weeks starting next week, so you will need to wait for a bit to contact him.  



I will be in Reykjavík for several days in mid-October to work with Oddur.  My wife and I are leaving for France next week, so if you need any additional information, please let me know before we leave. 



með bestu kveðjum, 



Richie 



Richard S. Williams, Jr. 

P.O. Box 911 

West Falmouth, MA 02574-0911 U.S.A. 

Tel: 1-508-540-6405 

e-mail: geoinfo at comcast.net   
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Daníel Gunnarsson" <danielgunnars at gmail.com> 
To: geoinfo at comcast.net, oddur at vedur.is, "OpenStreetMap in Iceland" <talk-is at openstreetmap.org> 
Sent: Wednesday, September 23, 2009 5:59:53 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern 
Subject: Geographic Names of Iceland's Glaciers in the OpenStreetMap.org  database 

I'm contacting you on behalf of the Icelandic OpenStreetMap community. 

We would like to get permission to use some data found in the text of 
the report: Geographic Names of Iceland's Glaciers: Historic and 
Modern. 
To my knowledge the text is public domain but int the cover of the 
book is a clause saying that we must be granted permission before 
using any copyrighted material from the copyright owner. 

Can you clarify which parts of the work are in the public domain? 
We're interested in sourcing the geodata found in the report. Both the 
names of natural features as well as their coordinates. 

So my question to you is: which of the material found in the report is 
copyrighted and which is not? 

The data we are interested in the most are the names and coordinates 
of the glaciers, mostly smaller sub-glaciers whose names are not of 
common knowledge of most Icelanders. 

If you are not familiar with OpenSteetMap. OSM is a collaborative 
project to create a free map of the world. 
Here is the map of Iceland: 
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=64.98&lon=-18.38&zoom=7&layers=B000FTF 
The data is available under the Creative Commons 
Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 licence. 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ 

Best regards 
Daníel Gunnarsson 
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