The Geospatial and Statistical Data Center at the University of Virginia is one of four library-based electronic centers. Other centers focus their user services and collections on texts, images and multimedia, and digitized rare materials. How do library-based GIS services fit within such a diverse collection of holdings? What challenges do librarians face when working with GIS metadata standards, especially when trying to adapt these standards and those for other media to establish a core data model? How can and how do GIS users influence the process?