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Featured Collection: Purdue University Campus Maps

By Shirley Li Featured Collection: Purdue University Campus Map Collection What is the item? With historical imageries from 1890 to 2014, Purdue University Campus Map Collection is preserved from a digital scholarship initiative to educate the Purdue community and the public about the historic grounds and structures of the campus. Located in the Archives and Special Collections, the physical campus maps were scanned and georeferenced by the libraries. Individual GeoTIFFs can be downloaded from this collection on the BTAA geoportal. What BTAA Library submitted the item? Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies Interesting tidbits All the historical maps are georeferenced and mosaicked into one mosaic dataset , which was published to ArcGIS server as one image service. University Hall is the oldest remaining building on campus. Completed in 1877, it is the only building remaining of the original six-building. Purdue Campus Maps: West Lafayette, Indiana, 1890-2
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Featured Item: National Farmers Market Directory

By Karen Majewicz Featured Item:  National Farmers Market Directory Spring has arrived and local farmers markets will soon be opening up in many parts of the country. Image caption: Midtown Farmers Market handpainted sign. Looking for a local selection of produce? Planning a road trip and don’t want to deal with grocery stores? Check out the National Farmers Market Directory , which is available as a spatial dataset, a downloadable CSV, or a queryable web service. The attribute data includes the name, location, seasonal dates, and hours of operation. It also notes what kind of food is available, including the following categories: Organic Baked goods Cheese Crafts Flowers Eggs Seafood Herbs Vegetables Honey Jams Maple Meat Nursery Nuts Plants Poultry Prepared Soap Trees Wine Coffee Beans Fruits Grains Juices Mushrooms Pet Food Tofu Wild Harvested Interesting tidbits: Several states in the Big Ten region have the most farmers markets in the country. The populous states of California (75
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The Ripple Effect of an Interface Change

By Danny Dotson Source:   EPA One of the features the Interface Committee has heard that would be useful for the Geoportal to have is the ability to either search for or filter by language.  So fine, let's make that happen. But, this is going to cause work in other areas to make language searching/filtering actually work well. Why is this the case?   Metadata: Does Each Item Have a Language listed? Short answer: no. So this means for language to be a valuable search/filter option, items need to have a language included in their metadata. Many currently don't.  Most of these are very likely in English as they are geospatial data sources from various government entities in the US.  But until we make sure and the change is made, the language for these items is essentially non-existent.  So the people working with metadata would need to examine the language-less items to add the appropriate language to the item's metadata. This can be time consuming just b
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Ukraine: Maps and Data

By BTAA GIN Project Team Members Feature: Ukraine Maps and Data This post lists geospatial resources related to Ukraine from many sources around the world. While the Geoportal does contain some maps of Ukraine , they are from non-Ukrainian agencies and primarily date back to WWII (or older); these maps may not provide the information our users are currently seeking. Librarians from the Big Ten Academic Alliance Geospatial Information Network (BTAA GIN) Project Team have compiled some additional, more current resources for Geoportal visitors. Caption: Map view of the Geoportal's resources on Ukraine. Click here or on the map to view search results in the Geoportal. Maps and Data from News Agencies These sources are provided by national-level news agencies. We believe that most of the content is freely available, though some portions may require a subscription. Al Jazeera Infographic News: Russia-Ukraine war by the numbers: Live Tracker BBC: Ukraine maps: At-a-glance guide to the R
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Vaccine Mapper: Knowledgebase web tool to track COVID-19 vaccine developers

By Milan Budhathoki The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic in early 2020 citing that the disease had high human-to-human transmission and it's severity to public health. As the COVID-19 outbreak began, many researchers and bio-pharma around the world were working diligently to find a vaccine that potentially cures SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing the COVID-19 global pandemic. Development of a successful vaccine would take several years and it is a tedious process that involves complex science, and thorough scrutiny by the government (i.e, authorizing body) before administering it to humans to prevent/cure disease. In-contrast to the traditional pipeline in vaccine development, COVID-19 pandemic had led to an urgency in developing vaccines at record speed. In the past, not many people were interested in the vaccine development model/science and business until COVID-19 pandemic hit hard on humanitarian and economic development. Figure 1: Vaccine Development Pipeli
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Minneapolis Sanborn Atlases (1912 and 1923-1930)

By Laura Kane McElfresh Featured Item or Collection: Fire insurance maps of Minneapolis ("Sanborn atlases"), 1912 and 1923-1930 (hard copies) What is the item? Two sets of Minneapolis "Sanborn atlases" ( Fire insurance maps of Minneapolis ), published in 1912. These large maps (the books are 70 cm high, or 27 1/2 inches) are drawn on a 1:600 scale (50 feet = 1 inch) and show a building-level, block-by-block depiction of the city. Caption: Sanborn maps "show the size, shape, and construction of dwellings, commercial buildings, and factories as well as fire walls, locations of windows and doors, sprinkler systems, and types of roofs. The maps also indicate widths and names of streets, property boundaries, building use, and house and block numbers". -- Introduction to the Sanborn Map Collection , Library of Congress Previously owned by the City of Minneapolis, these Sanborn Atlases were among a collection of Twin Cities-area maps and atlases stored in the
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An Interview with El Lower, GLANSIS Research Associate at Michigan Sea Grant (University of Michigan)

Interviewer: Caroline Kayko, Map and Geospatial Data Librarian, University of Michigan Michigan Sea Grant logo This interview is part of our Researcher Interview series, spotlighting the work being done creating and using GIS data at the Big Ten Academic Alliance institutions.  Name: El Lower Title: GLANSIS Research Associate Department/Center/Unit: Michigan Sea Grant, SEAS Preferred Web Link for department directory page or center/lab page: https://www.glerl.noaa.gov/glansis/index.html Background: The Great Lakes Aquatic Nonindigenous Species Information System (GLANSIS) is a NOAA-led inter-agency database designed to be a "one-stop shop" for information about introduced aquatic species in the Great Lakes. The database hosts information on identification, ecology, distribution, risk assessments, management strategies, and more for 180+ aquatic invaders in the region, and operates in partnership with Michigan Sea Grant and University of Michigan's School for Environm
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