Digimap is an online map and data delivery service, available by subscription to UK Higher and Further Education establishments. Operated by EDINA at the University of Edinburgh, Digimap offers a number of data collections, including Ordnance Survey, historical, geological, aerial photography, LiDAR, marine maps, land cover mapping, global mapping and census data. For more information about Digimap go to our website: https://digimap.edina.ac.uk Background image Contains OS data (c) Crown Copyright and database right 2022
//Digimap is happy to announce the Environment Collection’s webinar ‘The Land Cover Map Family: Land Cover, Crops and Hedgerows’. Presented by Dr. Clare Rowland Earth Observation Scientist and Emily Upcott Spatial Ecologist.
Date: 06 February 2024
Time: 1:00 PM
You can register Here
//Digimap’s new registration system was released on the 28th of January, we hope you’ll agree that it is a huge improvement over the previous version.
Users no longer have to wait up to 48 hours for registrations to be approved, they simply have to click a link in an email sent to them after filling in the registration form.
It already has its fans leading one site rep to say “I love the new registration system!” and another told us “Congratulations on instant registration for students. This is going to be very popular.”
The new instant access system is much more inline with user expectations from online services. Removing the need to wait overnight (or longer over weekends) to gain access has been very popular and has resulted in a significant increase in registrations during February. Over 6000 registrations were processed through the new system at all times of day and night!
We now need your help to make sure that the support material at your institution is up-to-date and that your students know that they can have access to the service the same day.
There is a full description of how to register using the new system in the help pages which guides you through the process:
http://digimap.edina.ac.uk/webhelp/digimapsupport/about.htm#access/registration.htm
If you are responsible for any local support pages, lecture notes, practical guides and any other course material please make sure these get updated. We actively encourage the incorporation of the images and text from the help page in any material produced. Please can you circulate this information as widely as possible to ensure that all users have up to date guidance.
One final plea is that you highlight the importance of entering the correct email address when registering. This should be an email address that is used regularly and it should be spelt correctly!
//As blogged about last month, we have been working on a new Digimap registration system which will be released next Wednesday (28th January) The current registration system has been in place for over ten years. It has served us well, but it is now rather dated especially because users have to wait for their registration to be manually approved and processed overnight. The new registration system allows users to get instant access to Digimap. This will be a significant improvement and help those students that leave their Digimap coursework a bit late! At least now they will be able to get access quickly and easily (unfortunately we can’t guarantee they’ll get the work submitted on time though!) Detailed help pages will be available from Wednesday, once the release has been completed and Digimap is available to users. To help prepare site reps and support staff for the change, here is an overview of the registration process. Registering with Digimap Registration will now be an automated two-step process. Users will supply their details to register and then they must activate access to collections by agreeing to the individual licences. After logging into Digimap to start, users will be presented with the registration form to enter their name, email address, department, status and where they heard about Digimap. 
After hitting the submit button, users will be sent an email with a link to verify their account. Once they have successfully verified, they will be directed back to the Digimap homepage, where they then complete the next step of activating collection access. 
Agreeing to licence for Digimap collections (activating access) After verifying their email address, users will need to agree to the licences for each of the specific Digimap collections that they wish to use, this is done through the licence agreements page. 
Users will only be able to agree to licences for the collections that their institution subscribes to. Once the user has agreed to the licence(s) and hit the confirm button, they will have access to those Digimap collections. If the process is completed in one go, it takes no more than a few minutes. Much quicker than the current system! Existing users Existing users will not notice any change unless they have not been active in a collection for more than 12 months. Access to a collection expires after 12 months of inactivity. If that’s the case, they will be prompted to accept the licence when they try to access an application in that collection. Generally though, if someone has not accessed a particular collection for more than 12 months, we don’t expect they will activate access and therefore will not notice any change with the new system. Access to active collections will carry on as normal. If you have any questions or comments, please contact the EDINA Helpdesk at edina@ed.ac.uk
//We are introducing a new registration system in January (26th to the 28th) and would like to give advance warning of the service disruption this is will cause.
New registrations for Digimap, using the current system, will be closed from 4pm Monday 26th January to ensure that no registrations are lost during the changeover. All Digimap services will then be unavailable all day on Tuesday 27th January, while we put the new system in place. Once all the work is complete the service will be available again hopefully by midday on Wednesday 28th January.
We apologise for the inconvenience caused but due to the significant changes required to release the new system we must close access to Digimap during this time. We urge you to create any maps or download data that you may need during the period of service unavailability in advance.
The new registration system will allow users to register and instantly access Digimap Collections via email verification speeding up access for new users significantly. We hope that this will help make up for the fact that new users will be prevented from registering during the maintenance. Existing registered and active users will not notice any change once normal service has been resumed.
If you have any questions or concerns please contact us:
More details about how the new system looks and works will be posted on the Digimap blog in the New Year.
//
October is the busiest time for welcoming new users to Digimap and we have already approved over 7500 registrations. As you know it is important to enter a valid email address when registering; this is how we send you a link to your data downloads and how we inform you of any changes or disruptions to the service.
We ask you to give us your academic email address where possible, we know for some this isn’t most commonly used address so please check that you have entered it correctly. Quite often the email address entered seems correct but is missing a particular element, for example:
Please make sure that you don’t miss out any parts of the address, you can try sending yourself an email to see if it is right… and it is always worth another check for typos.
Thank you.
//EDINA is undertaking some service maintenance on Tuesday 26 May, as previously advertised.
If you are registering for Digimap between 5pm on Monday 25 May and 9am on Wednesday 27 May 2009, your registration will not be processed until the evening of Wednesday 27 May 2009.
This means you will not be able to access Digimap until the morning of 28 May 2009. Applications received on Wednesday 27 May will be processed as usual that night.
EDINA is undertaking significant work on the databases underlying Digimap, and as a result, registration applications will be collected but not processed while this work takes place.
//On Tuesday 21 April, some Digimap users may have received email from EDINA entitled “Activating os registration”.
These emails were sent in error and have no bearing on the status of a user’s Digimap registration. Please ignore the email and accept EDINA’s apologies for any confusion caused.
//On Friday 12 December, EDINA will make a small change to the Digimap registration pages. Currently, users logging in to Digimap with new (un-registered) login credentials are given the option to link their new details with an existing registration that they may have with Digimap. This option was implemented to aid the transition between Athens and the UK Federation in August 2008.
EDINA has discovered that many users are not logging out of the UK Federation properly, and are inadvertently allowing other individuals to access services using their login details. This is because the only way to log out of the UK Federation is to close *all* browser windows.
As a result of this, some Digimap users are linking their Digimap registration with the UK Federation login details of other users who are not registered with Digimap. This allows both users access to the service, when only one individual has agreed to the terms of the licence.
In order to avoid this problem, EDINA is removing the option to link a new registration with an existing registration. This change will take effect from the evening of Friday 12 December 2008. Users registering for Digimap with a new set of login details will be automatically requested to submit these details as a new registration. This simplifies the registration process and ensures that users cannot link accounts inappropriately.
If you have questions about this change, or would like to discuss it further, please do not hesitate to contact us.
//The imminent changes to authentication mechanisms across the UK tertiary education sector have implications for access to Digimap. A change of login credentials may mean that users are required to re-register with Digimap in order to continue accessing the service.
From 1 August 2008, access to Digimap will be via the UK federation only. This will mean that all subscribing institutions must offer their users access to Digimap through one of two methods:
1. using OpenAthens
2. via an in-house Shibboleth Identity Provider
Whichever method your institution chooses, one of the following re-registration consequences will apply:
This applies to all those Digimap Collections which require a secondary registration (currently Marine Digimap, Geology Digimap and Digimap’s Ordnance Survey Collection). Any change to an institutional login account will result in a requirement for users to re-register their new account details with Digimap. Indeed, those who have already made the transition from Athens to Shibboleth will already have undertaken this re-registration.
When users are issued with UK federation login credentials, they will need to register these new credentials with Digimap. However, this means that any personalisation (including data download histories for MasterMap Download) associated with their previous (Athens) accounts will not be accessible through their new account. To ease the transition process, EDINA has implemented a linking mechanism between existing Athens registrations and new Shibboleth registrations. This is a two-stage process:
Stage 1
The first stage is to collect some additional information from each user, in the form of a question and answer, while they are still accessing Digimap with their Athens-based login credentials. For example, the user may be asked “what is your favourite place?”, to which the reply might be “New York”. From the date of implementation of this facility, all Digimap users have been asked to complete this process when they log in. This additional step is only required once, not once per Collection, but must be completed before access can be gained to the service.
Stage 2
The second stage of the linking mechanism occurs when a user logs in with a new set of (UK federation-based) credentials which have not yet been registered with Digimap, and will only occur if the user has completed the first stage of the process with their previous account details. With these new credentials the user is guided through an abbreviated form of the Digimap registration process. If the details submitted by the user (surname and email address) match an existing set of details, the user will be asked to confirm the answer to their chosen question (as per stage one). Assuming the question is answered correctly, the two registration records will then be linked and any personalisation within Digimap will be available to the user under their new login credentials.
This process is not able to catch all new account holders, since it relies on users submitting a surname and email address for their new login credentials which are identical to those they submitted using their previous (Athens) credentials. For example, an email address submitted with Athens credentials as user@student.institution.ac.uk will not match an email address submitted with the same individual’s UK federation credentials as user@institution.ac.uk, even though both addresses may function, and may reach the same person. We also understand from our site representatives that some users don’t always spell their surnames the same way!
Those users who do not log in with their Athens accounts and complete stage one of this process will not be able to link their existing account to any new account. Such users will need to register their new UK federation accounts in the usual way, and will not be able to retain any personalisation which existed with their previous account. Those users who already have both Athens and UK federation accounts registered with Digimap will not be able to link personalisation information between the two. However, logging in with a new Shibboleth account will allow users to link to a previous Shibboleth account.
This information has previously been published in EDINA Newsline (June 2008). An email with this information was also sent to all users on 12 June 2008.
//From 1 August 2008, when Digimap will be accessible via the UK federation only, it will no longer be possible to register a class to use Digimap under a single username. All access to Digimap will be by individual registration only.
UK federation rules do not permit more than one individual to access any resource under the same set of credentials. In addition, institutions subscribing to any Digimap Collection (except Historic Digimap) must assert “user accountability”. This means that the institution is able to trace activity in any given session to an individual. Clearly this is not possible if user identifiers (which are used to authenticate sessions within online resources) are shared between a group such as a class.
If you are a student, and need to register individually rather than using a class account…
Online registration is straightforward. Go to http://edina.ac.uk/digimap and click the Login (UK federation) button. If there is only one login button visible, click on it. Choose your institution from the drop-down list and enter your username and password if requested. If you are already registered for a Digimap Collection you will gain access to it when you click on the Collection banner. If you are not already registered for your chosen Collection, you will be asked to complete the online registration form. Please fill this in carefully, making sure your email address is correct. When your application has been processed you will receive an email to this effect.
If you are a member of staff wishing to give your class an exercise to do with Digimap…
You will need to make sure that all members of your class are registered individually with the Digimap Collection they need to use. This means they will each need their own username and password, and will need to register online as above.
Please note that it can take 2 working days to process applications. At busy times of year (September, October, November), and if an application needs to be queried, it may take longer than this. The processing time will also depend on the response time from the user. If you need to ask members of a class to register as individuals, please bear this timescale in mind.
