THE DISTRIBUTION OF GENERAL QUADRANGLE MAPS AND ASSOCIATED DIGITAL DATA AS STAND-ALONE WEB ENABLED DYNAMIC DIGITAL MAP PROGRAMS

Despite the increasingly dominate role that digital mapping techniques have played in the production of geologic maps over the last 10 years, the ability of the community to make these products widely available has lagged behind that of the production of maps. In addition, the integration of data products associated with these maps, in a format easily usable by the general public, has been poorly addressed. To close those gaps, the State Geologist's Office of Massachusetts is experimenting with the production of the Marlborough Quadrangle as a Dynamic Digital Map (http://ddm.geo.umass.edu/ddm-marl). Dynamic Digital Maps are computer programs that provide a way to distribute and maximize the use of map products in an easily accessible digital format. High quality color maps, digital images, movies, analytical data and explanatory text, including collar text and field guides, can be integrated in this cross-platform web enabled format that is intuitive to use, easily and quickly searchable, and requires no additional proprietary software to operate. Maps and photos (saved as jpeg files) and movies are stored outside the program, which acts as an organizational framework and index to present these data. Analytical data are uploaded and stored as tab-delimited text within the program, and can be saved as text documents, for use out of the program, or for inclusion in traditional databases. An open source program, the “DDM-Template” into which you can insert your data, and an accompanying "Cookbook" on how to do this are available at http://ddm.geo.umass.edu, along with numerous DDMs that demonstrate this potential. Making a DDM from the Template requires the use of the multi-platform programming environment Revolution (www.runrev.com) that has a low learning curve. Once your data have been added to the “DDM-Template”, and stored in related specified directories, a single short step allows you create stand-alone programs for numerous Unix, and all Windows and Macintosh operating systems. The correct stand-alone DDM program for a given user's operating system can be made available for download from http protocol sites. The DDM program can then access its associated data directly from that site with no browser needed. Alternatively, the entire package can be distributed and used from CD, DVD or from flash-memory storage.