BTAA-GIN Collection Stories

 By Theresa Quill   Featured Item or Collection: Indiana Historic Maps; Indiana Sanborn Maps   One of the most distinctive landmarks on the Indiana University Bloomington (IU) campus is a small creek, sometimes optimistically referred to as a "river" that flows through the heart of campus. In the spring, students hang hammocks along its bank, classes take samples to study water quality, and the campus maintains a large green space in central campus because periodic floods preclude any new buildings from encroaching on the creek. This creek is currently called The Campus River, though it has had other names throughout IU's 200+ year history.   The Campus River on a snowy day. Photo Credit James Brosher/Indiana University Scanned maps from the Herman B Wells Library's Map Collection help us trace not only the name changes of this campus landmark, but also the environmental impact the creek has had on the town.   ...

By Jay Bowen - GIS Specialist, The Digital Scholarship & Publishing Studio, The University of Iowa Libraries  The BTAA Geoportal has a wealth of interesting and beautiful historic scanned maps available to the public to download. Recently, I discovered John Henry Renshawe's shaded relief maps of US national parks from the early 1900s. Using his Panoramic View of the Yosemite National Park, California from 1914, I wanted to demonstrate an open-source technique for adding three dimensionality to these fantastic relief maps. Download and Georeference the JPG File The first step is to download the map here and load it into a georeferencer tool in your favorite GIS software. While I find georeferencing in ArcGIS Pro to be an intuitive breeze, I used the Georeferencer tool in QGIS to keep with an open-source and MacOS-oriented workflow. You can do a lot of amazing GIS work in the comfort of your home with a MacBook! As shown in the screenshot above, I rubbersheeted the ...

By Danny Dotson,  Head - Orton Memorial Library of Geology & Gardner Family Map Room; Mathematical Sciences Librarian & Science Education Specialist at The Ohio State University Earlier this year, the University Libraries was presented with a need for maps of an Appalachian region. The goal was to find maps of parts of this region over a period of time to see how the topography changed due to mining. Information and visual representations derived from these maps were integrated into the exhibition Jonas N.T. Becker: A Hole is not a Void . This project involved identifying maps that could meet the artist’s needs. This involved first identifying items in the catalog that could potentially fit and pull these maps. Since many of the maps were USGS maps, there were quite a number of maps pulled for further review. The artist worked with staff and student workers at the Orton Memorial Library of Geology to give them specifics of their need, and some of our student wo...

"There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published." -- Victor Green, in the preface to the 1941 Edition of the Negro Motorist Green Book .   From 1936 to 1966 Victor Green, and later his widow Alma Green, edited the Negro Motorist Green Book which listed businesses that would serve black travelers without harassment or prejudice.  Race or ethnicity of the business owner was not a criteria for inclusion in the listings.  We examined 9 editions of the Green Book, and created an online interactive map of the 86 Detroit businesses.    The businesses were often grouped in African-American neighborhoods. Many of the Detroit locations today are underneath highways, Comerica Park and Ford Field. Other clusters of business can be noted in other parts of the city. This project was undertaken to illustrate the power of combining multiple geospatial datasets to create insight into the past. The addresses in t...

By Jaime Martindale For nearly 15 years, the University of Wisconsin-Madison has been collecting and archiving state and local geospatial data.  While students and researchers may be the primary audience, we hope that as these collections grow, broad use by public audiences looking for historical geographic footprints of places in Wisconsin also grows. Wisconsin maintains a series of “Foundational Layers” which are critical to the flow of annual business applications, information sharing, and other use cases in government agencies across the state. For agencies to provide essential public services to constituents, having reliable geospatial data is important to support functions like 911 emergency response, maintenance and construction of roadways, sidewalks or trails, building new facilities, and smart community planning.   As important is it may be to offer users the latest and greatest versions of foundational layers for current issues and applications, having a...