Discover Ordnance Survey map data

Edina agreement for further education establishments

Since  2005, staff and students at Further Education institutions have able to access a range of OS Map data products free of charge if their institution subscribes to the EDINA Digimap service. This service is provided but the EDINA Datacentre at University of Edinburgh.  To access this online resource, you need to ensure that your institution holds a current Ordnance Survey Education Copyright Licence, which costs £145 + VAT for FE colleges, and for 6th form colleges it is just £88 + VAT.

Staff and students can view and print on-line maps of any location in Great Britain at a series of predefined scales, and query and display postcodes or place names. More advanced on-line mapping facilities allow users to specify their map scale, overlay different map products and print maps up to A0 in size. Being able to print maps means that users do not need to be online or require a suite of computers to use the materials. Users can also download the map, postcode and place name data for use with appropriate application software such as GIS, CAD, spreadsheets and databases.

As these materials are copyright cleared for educational use, they can be incorporated in teaching and learning materials such as course packs, lecture notes and presentations, student reports, projects, dissertations and assignments as well as Virtual Learning Environments.

The value of Digimap is already being to be realised in further education, especially for developing cartographic and ICT skills on GCSE, AS and A2 Geography courses as well as the ASET Level 3 Certificate in Geographical Information Systems. As Marianne Addy, GIS Course Tutor at Colchester Sixth Form College explained: “Digimap has been invaluable in providing us with a wide variety of digital data that has been easy to access. Our students have been able to use both vector and raster data sets as an integral part of their Geographical Information Systems project researching environmental quality and deprivation issues in Colchester.”

She went on to say that “it would have been difficult to run the project without Digimap” due to the scarcity of other suitable alternative digital mapping data resources.

John Curry, HE Area Leader, City of Bath College also illustrates the popularity of the resource at his College by saying: “Cheap access to Digimap has transformed our teaching using GIS, in particular on our HND Computing courses. With the Digimap data as a backdrop, we have launched a range of student projects on some very interesting and educationally challenging topics. These include: plotting the spread of Foot and Mouth Disease in Devon; identifying alternatives for pipeline routes around the historical city centre of Bath and investigating the long term impact of sea level rise on Watchet.”

Kieran Sheehan, Lecturer on the Countryside Management section at Bishop Burton College explains how the Digimap service is being used to great affect at his College: "Our degree students are able to access the raw Ordnance Survey Landline data and manipulate it, using a GIS package, for their coursework. So far they have used the data to accurately map the cropping patterns on Bishop Burton College farm, accurately locate red grouse on moorland in the Pennines and map radio-tracked birds and mammal traps on the College Estate. The possibilities are endless and the students are making the most of them."

To find out more about this offer and the Digimap service, please visit

http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/jisc_banding.aspx

http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/catalogue/coll_digimap_fe/coll_digimap_fe_fy.aspx

Brian Mitchell

JISC Collections Promotion Manager

Strand Bridge House

3rd Floor

The Strand

London, WC2R 1HH

b.mitchell@jic.ac.uk

020 7848 1736