China Geo-Explorer II

The GMU Libraries has licensed China Geo-Explorer II, which provides a rich collection of census, business, and other government data for China at various geographical units and time.
You can create maps, charts, tables, and reports and download data in PDF, Excel, Word, and shape files.

You can access this through our libraries databases and consult the User's Guide for further instructions.

Georeferencer from British Library

The British Library just released a new set of historic scanned maps online for public georeferencing.  Users have opportunities to georeferencing these scanned maps if they know detailed knowledge about particular places by using the Klokan Technologies Georeferencer tool.  Please learn more about the project including the exciting tool at  http://www.bl.uk/maps

Mason celebrates 2012 GIS Day, Nov. 14.

Location: Center for the Arts

Time: 10:00-3:30

The Mason libraries will be joining the university in celebrating GIS Day events and demonstrating "Mapping Your Data with Google Fusion Tables" in the Center for the Arts. There will be other events including Students' Poster Sessions, Presentations, Panel Discussion on Geospatial Intelligence, and FREE buffet lunch.

Please see the detailed schedule of events at:
http://infoguides.gmu.edu/content.php?pid=11647&sid=3281455

Discover GIS and Geography through this event!

New Capabilities of the Geospatial Data Preservation Resource Center

The Geospatial Data Preservation Resource Center becomes a discovery tool for recommending online resources such as software applications, research articles, presentations, and standards that are helpful for geospatial data preservation. 

Please visit the Geospatial Data Preservation Resource Center which is being developed and managed as part of the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) of the Library of Congress.

Google's Campus Street View

People can tour a campus effectively from their own computer and can be familiar themselves with campus layout.

"Google's Campus Street View gives the ability to its users to visit and tour college campuses virtually online."

Visit the participating campuses around the World:


See more information: GIS Blog

New Version of ACS Mapping Extension

is now available to download ; http://gesg.gmu.edu/census

Two major changes are:
-using ACS (American Community Survey) data downloaded from the new American Factfinder (AFF2)
-Additional function comparing estimates from a set of units to estimates in other units.

Please update this extension if you have not done so.. 

New Plant Hardiness Map from USDA

The USDA just released the new version of its Plant Hardiness Zone Map (PHZM) online, which is based on interactive format using GIS.

This map shows the standard by which gardeners and growers can determine which plants are most likely to thrive at a location.  You can find your zone by zip code.

Visit this online map: http://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/PHZMWeb/

The full article is at:
http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?contentid=2012/01/0022.xml&contentidonly=true

New Geospatial Platform Website

"The federal governement and its geospatial partners today unveiled www.geoplateform.gov, a prototype website providing an inital view of the future of user-friendly, integrated, federal data collections on common geographic maps." (See press release by the Federal Geographic Data Committee (11/09/2011)).

This platform combines map-based data and tools with the latest Internet technologies to deliver geospatial information in a simple, understandable package.  Users can easily find federally-maintained geospatial data, services and application, as well as access data from Federal, State, Tribal, Regional and local government.

SABIN:School Attendance Boundary Information System

Monday, December 12, 2011

SABIN:School Attendance Boundary Information System

The College of William & Mary and the Minnesota Population Center have launched the new School Attendance Boundary Information System funded by the National Science Foundation to assemble, harmonize, and disseminate GIS data for grade-specific school attendance embedded with school districts throughout the United States. In addition to GIS data for school attendance boundaries, SABINS also provides:

• Census data tabulated for the school attendance boundaries
• Crosswalk tables that link school attendance boundaries to data from the U.S. Dept. of Education's Common core of Data.

Also the system allows:

• download Census data for multiple grade levels in one extract
• download GIS data fro multiple grade levels in one extract
• constrain or expand data searches by specifying any combination of topics or datasets.

Visit the website for more information: http://www.sabinsdata.org

GIS Day @ Mason 2011--pictures

Great GIS Day once again at Mason! Many people attended the open house event in Fenwick Library and loved our demo on Google My Map. The attendants had many ideas to visualize their data (video, digital images, and text contents, etc) according to locations.


See for more selected pictures taken for this year's GIS Day event at Mason: http://infoguides.gmu.edu/content.php?pid=25574&sid=2298447

Celebrate GIS Day @ Mason

Please join us as Mason Libraries celebrate GIS Day 2011. The libraries annual GIS Day Open House event will be held Wednesday, Nov. 16 from 10:30 am-2:00 pm in Data Services, Floor 1 (Wing C-103), Fenwick Library.

There will be GIS demo on "How to visualize data using Google My Map," quizzes, prizes, refreshments, and more!

For more information on Mason's various GIS Day activities, please visit http://infoguides.gmu.edu/gisday or http://ggs.gmu.edu/GISDay.html

See you there!

Interactive Maps from USAID

USAID has recently developed a series of interesting interactive maps on the crisis in the Horn of Africa. See them at:
http://www.usaid.gov/fwd/crisis.html

Mapping the 2010 Census Data

The first set of 2010 Census data is released as well as maps on changes of population since 2000. Browse population growth and decline, changes in racial and ethnic concentrations and patterns of housing development down to your local area from this nice NY Times page:

http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/map?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifthab1

An ArcGIS Extention Tool for Mapping American Community Survey

This tool allows detailed instruction to download American Community Survey (ACS) data and associated boundary data to be used in ArcGIS. It's to improve estimates of ACS data when mapping the data. See the details at http://gesg.gmu.edu and download the tool. This tool is developed by Dr. David Wong at GMU and funded by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Simplymap 2.0 is here!

Simplymap migrated to the redesigned version, Simplymap 2.0 with a much improved interface for web-based mapping and data extraction application. You can access this through our library database portal.

If you come across any problem or have some questions related to use the version, please contact the data service (datahelp@gmu.edu).

Spatial Humanity Projects

utilize GIS technology to explain all sorts of research questions related to humanity subjects. A recent NY times article talks about the new field of spatial humanities and their spatial projects. Please click on the following projects for the details.

*The various digital mapmakers projects at UVA
*Animated Atlas of African History(for economic and demographic trends, violent conflicts, and changing the territory names from 1879 and 2002)at Brown.
*Plejades (historical geographic information about the Greek and Roman World)
*Maps on Globalization and trade at Princeton.
*Digital music project at Stanford (mapping musical notes in cognitive space).
*Maps about Vietnames sidewalk life at MIT.

The article also includes a step by step tutorials page on "how to use the new tools and resources for teaching and scholarly work"

GIS & Public Health Day Videos

If you missed the 7th Annual GIS & Public Health Day at the University at Albany on May 3rd of this year, you can catch up with videos of the six conference presentations at:http://empirestatephtc.org/videos.cfm.

Geo Data Visualization--THATcamp

Those who missed the presentation provided by Mano Marks, Senior Geo Developer Advocate at Google, from a THATcamp workshop organized by the Center for History and New Media at Mason on Friday, 6/3, here is the URL for the presentation:http://goo.gl/GLQiB.

Now you can create,import, and share you data tables and visualize them on Google with a simple tool such as Google Fusion Tables.

You can find the tutorial of Fusion Tables and Maps and other useful Google development posted by Mano Marks from here: http://twitter.com/#!/ManoMarks.

Google Map Maker

"Google Map Maker" allows users to contribute their own spatial knowledge to their local maps. This Google's exciting tool has already been used among some of 183 countries around the world.

See more information on this through the Scout Report (2011-4-22)

World Topo BaseMaps by DeLorme

provides a complete global data set with higher accuracy. See details from here.

"It’s available for download for a minimum purchase of $10 (.01 per 100 square km). Download the map and integrate to your software and GPS".