Ammonoids and Mash-ups: The Potential of Geobrowsers to Enhance Public Awareness of Geodiversity Sites and Objects in Their Spatial Context

Widening awareness of geodiversity involves widening access to data on the topic, presented in formats usable by non-specialists. Although there has been a trend for governmental agencies, research organizations and other institutions to make their data freely available, the interfaces for working with these data are usually geared to the specialist user, creating a digital divide. We present the use of geobrowsers (simple, usually free, Geographical Information Systems applications) as a means of delivering spatially-attributed data relating to geodiversity in a familiar interface, while retaining the links to the original specialist databases.