Abstract
Creating and sustaining geoportal resources requires agile, innovative, and collaborative approaches to project management. Establishing and cultivating relationships with federal, state, and local agencies, as well as university researchers and instructors, has been vital to sustaining a geoportal over the past two and a half decades at the University of Idaho. How users access geospatial resources has changed, but flexibility remains critical for fostering engagement and use. This article summarizes the collaborative approach taken at the University of Idaho Library to build and maintain our geoportal and considers system theoretic ideas about how traditional, planned project management approaches tend to suffer in comparison to a flexible and agile process. Over time statewide GIS governance and university computing and data management services have changed geographic data and information needs and services. Yet despite technological evolution, collaboration and flexibility has, does, and will continue to provide opportunities to inform the delivery of geospatial services. It is the center of this work, and it doesn’t only happen within the walls of the library or the academic institution; it also takes place within larger communities that libraries serve. These relationships, built through sustained, engaged collaborations, are what have helped the geoportal to endure.