Thursday, December 10, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
USGS, Conference Room A, Bldg 3,
Menlo Park, California

A New Generation of Maps

Topographic Maps for the 21st Century

by Mark DeMulder, Director of the National Geospatial Program

• December 5 marks the 125th Anniversary of the popular USGS topographic map, used by engineers and surveyors, industry, academia, and outdoor enthusiasts for reliably accurate information
• Starting December 3 the new US Topo maps will be available free on the Web at the USGS Store: http://store.usgs.gov. Each USGS Topo quadrangle is constructed in GeoPDF format from key Layers of geographic data found in The National Map
• This new technology enables richer content, providing the user with more than a standard map
• The National Map provides a continuous evolution and incorporation of additonal data layers. For more information: http://nationalmap.gov

1. arcgisonline
2. careersingis
3. esri_news
4. freegeogtools
5. freegisdata
6. gearthtwitter
7. geocomm_daily
8. geocortexblog
9. geo-jobe
10. geoutreachtwitr
11. geosar_blog
12. giscafe_headlns
13. giscafe_indstry
14. giscafe_users
15. gisuser
16. gmapstwitter
17. googlegeodev
18. ijgis
19. kml_articles
20. kml_projects
21. latlongblog
22. lookbackmaps
23. manifoldnet_gis
24. mapmeat_blog
25. planetizenblog
26. sirf
27. spatialkeyblog
28. tatuk_gis

The Center for Investigative Reporting’s California Watch project, Spot.Us, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, the Sunlight Foundation, and  MAPLight.org, have teamed up to sponsor the first California Data Camp & DataSF App Contest on November 7, 2009.

The one-day gathering is open to developers, journalists, community organizers, policy wonks, students and others interested in working with government data to provide insights into and information about California and its communities. A variety of issues will be tackled including computer-assisted reporting, data visualization, data access, data transparency, and data management...

"In the spirit of true participatory democracy, MAPLight.org is proud to support this project and development of the next killer transparency app," said MAPLight.org’s executive director Daniel Newman.

The all-day event will be at Citizen Space, 425 Second Street, San Francisco. It runs from 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., followed by dinner. Cost is $10 per person. Registration can be completed at: http://datacamp.eventbrite.com.

More information about Data Camp & DataSF App Contest can be found at: http://maplight.org/DataSF_App_Contest.

Use Case: Student Projects

STUDENTS could post their projects to the Wikimedia GeoServer under a Creative Commons license as a way to publicize their studies and research. Those layers could then be easily found and attributed by other students, organizations or agencies that find their work relevant.

[edit]Use Case: Municipal Data

MUNICIPALITIES are heavy users and distributors of GIS information, but GIS Managers often find it very difficult to convince local officials of the benefits of GIS because city governments don't want to finance or deal with the hassle. A Wikimedia GeoServer could become a platform of choice for under-funded municipalities to publish their data layers for public consumption. I suspect that many municipalities who have discovered they have articles on Wikipedia are enjoying some of the benefits. These articles would be tremendously enhanced by the addition of a mechanism for citizens to download municipal map layers. Organizations like the First Amendment Coalition have been working hard to establish county parcel geodata layers to be made available to citizens under the Public Records Act. Being able to find this information through a Wikimedia GeoServer would reduce the number of at cost CD-ROM duplicates local agencies have to make and save citizens a trip, and wait in line, at the planning office.

[edit]Use Case: Environmental Work

ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH is also a heavy user of GIS information because only with geo-referenced data layers can you ask complex spatial questions. In the United States, a primary source for GIS data is the USGS and there is no need to mirror or duplicate their massive catalog on a Wikipedia GeoServer. However, once an organization has performed geospatial analysis and created new layers with their results, these could then be added to the GeoServer for sharing with the world.

Additionally, were examples of the first two use cases available, I suspect that many environmental organizations would find student data and municipal data to be a tremendous complementary source of information to USGS data. Local watershed councils, for example, rarely have the infrastructure to publish their actual geodata because they are underfunded and hyper-focused on collecting the data. A Wikimedia GeoServer would be a great service to them and a potentially powerful way to increase awareness of Wikimedia at the grass roots.

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Date:   Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:03:28 -0400
From:   Matthew Edney <edney@wisc.edu>
Reply-To:       edney@wisc.edu
To:     map history discussion list <maphist@geo.uu.nl>,
maps-l@listserv.uga.edu

Dear All:

I am very pleased to announce the following public presentation:

Thoreau’s Cartographic Explorations: Imaging Nature through Maps

John W. Hessler, Senior Cartographic Librarian, Geography and Map
Division, Library of Congress

Mattson/New York Times Lecture, Osher Map Library and Smith Center for
Cartographic Education, University of Southern Maine

Hannaford Lecture Hall, Abromson Center, University of Southern Maine
(Portland Campus)

7pm, 16 October 2009

Free; open to the public

Henry David Thoreau is famous as the author of Walden (1854), The Maine Woods (1864), and other classics of American transcendental literature. Less well known is his work as a land surveyor in Concord, Mass., work that allowed him to examine nature at length and in detail.  Still unexamined is his interest in the early European maps of North America. Thoreau gave a brief history of the mapping of New England in his Cape Cod (1865). He also carefully redrew to scale maps by Champlain, Wytfliet, Ortelius, and other early writers on the New World for his unpublished “Canadian” and “Indian” notebooks. Mr. Hessler’s recent identification of two copies of Champlain’s maps as being Thoreau’s handiwork has led him to investigate this hitherto unappreciated aspect of Thoreau’s life and works, and to locate other map copies by Thoreau now missing from the notebooks. These cartographic explorations, especially with respect to the recording of indigenous toponyms, informed Thoreau’s notions of the American wilderness and his environmental imagination. This lecture is the first public presentation of this exciting, new research.

N.B. We hope to feature some of the maps related to Thoreau's work in the Osher Map Library’s exhibition, /American Treasures/, which opens on 15 October.

This public presentation is part of the celebration of the reopening of the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education at the University of Southern Maine. In addition to the lecture and exhibition, this celebration includes a one-day conference -- New Directions in the Study of Early American Cartographies -- on 17 October and public open house and ribbon-cutting on 18 October.

For more information, please go to:

http:/www.usm.maine.edu/maps

Sincerely,
Matthew Edney

--
Matthew H. Edney
http://www.usm.maine.edu/~edney

Osher Chair in the History of Cartography
University of Southern Maine
http://www.usm.maine.edu/maps

Director, History of Cartography Project
University of Wisconsin-Madison
http://www.geography.wisc.edu/histcart/

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Additional information about the re-opening of the Osher Map Library:

 www.usm.maine.edu/maps/new%20directions%20announcement%2009-06-24.pdf

 GeoPDF 2.2 OGC 08-139r1 was approved as OGC Best Practice...

•      ArcGIS by ESRI (http://www.esri.com)
•      Manifold (http://www.manifold.net)
•      MapDotNet Server for Visual Studio (http://www.mapdotnet.com/Pages3.0/default.aspx)
•      GeoMedia by Intergraph  (http://www.intergraph.com/sgi/products/default.aspx)  Note:  This is a well-known product that has a long history and many government, municipal and industry users but it is both expensive and increasingly deprecated in its UI and application architecture.

•      GeoServer (http://www.geoserver.org)
•      MapServer (http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu)
•      QGIS (http://www.qgis.org)
•      uDig (http://www.refractions.net)  

•      Oracle Spatial (http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/spatial/index.html)
•      SQL Server 2005/2008 (http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/whats-new.aspx)
•      PostgreSQL + PostGIS (http://postgis.refractions.net)
•      Access (http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/geodatabase/index.html)
•      dBase (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBase)

•      shp2xml (http://proximityone.com/shp2xml.htm)
•      shp2kml (http://www.zonums.com/shp2kml.html)
•      kml2shp (http://www.zonums.com/kml2shp.html)

• http://kml2kml.geoblogspot.com/Home

• Google Maps API (http://code.google.com/apis/maps/index.html)  - Note: The "Flash" API is deceptively named! This is primarily a FLEX API at this time.

• Yahoo! Maps API (http://developer.yahoo.com/maps/)
• Virtual Earth SDK (http://dev.live.com/virtualearth/sdk/)
• MapQuest API (http://www.mapquest.com/openapi)
• uMapper (http://umapper.com/)
• Open Street Map (http://openstreetmap.org/)

• FlashMaps (http://www.flashmaps.com)
• FlashDen (http://www.flashden.net)
• WorldKit (http://worldkit.org)
• ModestMaps (http://modestmaps.com)
• SpatialKey (http://www.spatialkey.com)

• http://gos2.geodata.gov/wps/portal/gos
  
• http://data.geocomm.com/
  
• http://www.usgs.gov/ngpo/
  
• http://www.census.gov/geo/www/maps
• http://www.cdc.gov/epiinfo/maps.htm
• http://www.cloudmade.com/