1. Geospatial One-Stop 2 Launched
2. GIS Portal Toolkit Overview
3. New Books from ESRI Press
4. New Metadata Course on ESRI Virtual Campus
5. Get Ready for GIS Day
6. ESRI Education User Conference and International User Conference Highlights

1. Geospatial One-Stop 2 Launched

The second-generation Geospatial One-Stop (GOS) portal was launched in July, introducing several new features to the geospatial data clearinghouse, including the ability to create a personalized home page that keeps track of the geographic areas you search most often through a concept known as My Geography. The overall approach to searching has been simplified in GOS 2, which utilizes place-names rather than a map interface to identify the geographic area to be searched. The standard search tool includes two boxes, What and Where, to define the query. An advanced search option is also available; it allows users to specify time period, data categories, and content types, in addition to topic and location, and allows the spatial extent to be specified on a map. GOS 2 integrates Google search technology with the ESRI Portal Toolkit in an IBM WebSphere environment. To try GOS 2, visit Geospatial One-Stop.

2. GIS Portal Toolkit Overview

GIS Portal Toolkit is a combination of technologies and professional services that provide a framework for creating GIS clearinghouses and portals such as the Geospatial One-Stop. The GIS Portal Toolkit provides search, mapping, and data management capabilities built atop ArcSDE and ArcIMS.

GIS Portal Toolkit includes metadata harvesting tools that can automatically harvest metadata through the Z39.50 or Open Archives Initiative protocols or from Web-accessible folders, allowing multiple departments or organizations to publish metadata through a single GIS portal. The GIS data itself remains with the original author but a centralized catalog is created for the metadata, making it easier for potential users to search and locate GIS data.

The GIS Portal Toolkit is available to anyone who completes the GIS Portal Toolkit Workshop, a three-day course in which participants walk through the process of building a GIS portal and leave with a functioning prototype. More information is available at www.esri.com/gisportal.

3. New Books from ESRI Press

Designing Better Maps: A Guide for GIS Users, by noted cartographer and GIS expert Cynthia Brewer, describes in no-nonsense terms how to design powerful map layouts whether creating maps for reports, print publication, or interactive Web displays. The book breaks down the myriad decisions about color, font, and symbology that must be made to create maps that effectively communicate the message intended by the mapmaker.

Cartographies of Disease is a comprehensive survey of the technology of mapping and its relationship to the battle against disease. This look at medical mapping advances a radical argument that maps are not merely representations of spatial realities but a way of thinking about relations between viral and bacterial communities, human hosts, and the environments in which diseases flourish.

GIS Tutorial: Workbook for ArcView 9 is designed for a broad audience and combines ArcGIS tutorials with self-study exercises that start with the basics and progress to more difficult functionality. Presented in a step-by-step format, the book can be adapted to your specific training needs, whether it's teaching GIS to a classroom of graduate students or using the book for individual study.

Remote Sensing for GIS Managers guides readers through the historical, conceptual, and practical uses of remote sensing in the rapidly growing GIS community. Author Stan Aronoff starts with the basics, outlines the characteristics of remote-sensing data, and confronts the challenges of interpreting, managing, and storing the ever-increasing range of remotely sensed data available today.

4. New Metadata Course on ESRI Virtual Campus

Creating and Maintaining Metadata Using ArcGIS Desktop: This new course shows how metadata supports efficient management and use of spatial data and teaches practical strategies for creating and maintaining metadata using ArcGIS Desktop software. Participants learn how to write proper metadata using tools in ArcCatalog and to automate metadata workflows using templates. This course is included with ESRI Higher Education site licenses.

5. Get Ready for GIS Day

GIS Day is Wednesday, November 16, 2005. A wide variety of materials to help you plan and host a GIS Day event are available from the GIS Day Web site (www.gisday.com) including new videos, sign templates, games, and GIS lessons. If you are hosting a GIS Day event, be sure to register it so people can find you!

6. ESRI Education User Conference and International User Conference Highlights

For those of you unable to attend the ESRI Education User Conference, here are some of the highlights. An overview of the International User Conference is available at www.esri.com/uc.

At the ESRI Education User Conference, David Rumsey (map collector extraordinaire) presented the opening Keynote Address, focusing on the opportunities that technologies such as GIS provide for enhancing geographic learning. Rumsey opened his presentation with a look at historical methods of teaching geography using items from his extensive collection. He then turned to current methods as he brought up satellite images from various Web applications and emphasized the importance of bringing this technology to the classroom. Rumsey showed several examples of using technology such as ArcGlobe and historical maps to engage the interest of students. He also mentioned 3D, gaming, and other technologies as assets in education. "These tools will engage students in spatial thinking as they use the Web and other technologies," said Rumsey.

Spatial Thinking is also the theme of a new report from the National Research Council, the results of which were previewed in a special session hosted by Dr. Anthony DeSouza of the National Academies and Dr. Roger Downs of Pennsylvania State University. The report argues that spatial thinking is useful in a wide variety of disciplines and underpins many discoveries in math and science as well as geography, and yet spatial thinking receives little attention in current K–12 curriculum. The authors assert that spatial thinking should be a fundamental part of education and that GIS technology can support it, especially when tailored to the needs of the classroom. The published report will be available this fall from the National Academies Press.

Biologist and explorer Dr. Michael Fay presented the closing Keynote Address, providing a powerful look at the present and future of the African environment through a series of photographs and observations taken during his Africa Megaflyover project. The goal of the ongoing Megaflyover project is to document current environmental conditions and identify areas to target for conservation efforts. Fay will fly approximately 100,000 miles in a Cessna plane equipped with cameras and GPS to collect information that will be used by the Wildlife Conservation Society, the National Geographic Society, and other researchers to better understand the African environment.

Between the Opening and Closing Sessions were more than 100 user presentations and computer labs on a wide variety of topics. ESRI Librarian Shelly Sommer offered a workshop entitled Online Research Strategies for GIS Topics that explored the resources (journal articles, conference proceedings, etc.) available through the Virtual Campus Library and the GIS Bibliography. There was one paper session devoted to GIS in Libraries, with presentations from Carol Cady (St. Lawrence University), Clara McLeod (Washington University), Michael Howser (Miami University), and Jeff Essic (North Carolina State University). Abstracts of the presentations are available in the Conference Proceedings, available online at http://gis.esri.com/library/userconf/educ05/index.html.

More highlights from the International User Conference can be found at www.esri.com/uc, but worth mention is the 2005 Special Achievement in GIS Awards given to Christie Koontz and Dean Jue of Florida State University's GeoLib Program. The GeoLib Program uses GIS to understand and improve public library service. One of GeoLib's recent projects is the creation of the U.S. Public Libraries Geographic Database (PLGDB), which links public library locations with census characteristics and data from the National Center for Education Statistics. PLGDB can be accessed through an interactive map viewer, allowing library administrators and other researchers to visualize census data around public library outlets and conduct basic spatial analyses such as calculating the total population within two miles of a library outlet. For more information on the Special Achievement in GIS Awards, see http://www.esri.com/sag/, or for more information on the PLGDB project, see www.geolib.org/.