Opening the cartographic heritage to the world of spatial data infrastructures

The importance of geographic information for decision taking and resource management has motivated the interest of local, regional and national governments to create interoperable Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI), to facilitate data sharing and reusing. In this context, geographic information compiled along the years in libraries and historic archives with cartographic heritage holdings may play a relevant role. The objective of this article is to present the guidelines for the integration of cartographic heritage in Spatial Data Infrastructures. This work describes both the crosswalk designed for the transformation from cartographic heritage metadata standards into SDI metadata standards, and the benefits of this integration.