GIS & Data Services: Request a Purchase

Purchases

Browse data sets in our collection.

Email our GIS Librarian to request the purchase of GIS data. Email our Numeric Data Services Librarian to request the purchase of numeric data sets.

Include as much information as you can, such as:

  • Publisher/producer of the data
  • Data product name or title
  • Years available and years you particularly want
  • If there are different geographies available, what they are and which you particularly want
  • Price
  • Where specifically you found information about the data set (a citation in an article, on a website, etc.)

Please note:

Before we spend funds we must consider:

  • Price, and whether it’s an outright purchase or if access is time-limited or “leased;”
  • Prohibitive license terms;
  • How many researchers are likely to use a data product; and
  • The available budget.

So for example, data that cost $20,000 for one year’s access and are only likely to be used by one person are unlikely to be purchased.

Students: Be sure to speak with your advisor about the data and your research hypothesis before contacting us, as your research ideas may change drastically with that input.

Remember that the purchase process can take a long time. How quickly we can acquire data depends on several unpredictable factors, including negotiating a license between the data vendor and the University Libraries. Licenses are legal agreements and therefore must be reviewed with care — this is not a fast process. We cannot estimate when a data product will be available for use after we agree to try to buy it. Finally, some licenses contain terms the Libraries cannot agree to; in these cases, we will not pursue the purchase.