• ESRI Presentation for Map and Geography Round Table at ALA Annual Conference
• No-Cost Getting Started with GIS Course Covers GIS Concepts
• New from ESRI Press
• What’s New in ESRI Data & Maps at 9.3
• 2008/2013 Demographic Data Now Available

ESRI Presentation for Map and Geography Round Table at ALA Annual Conference

Aleta Vienneau, ESRI’s metadata expert, will discuss the current state of metadata standards for GIS resources and describe how ESRI software is evolving to support these standards and simplify the process of managing metadata collections. The presentation, Describing and Organizing Geographic Information, will be given for the Map and Geography Round Table (MAGERT) at the American Library Association Annual Conference on Monday, June 30, at 1:30 p.m. in the Anaheim Convention Center. The program will also include discussion of the new RDA standard, presented by Mary Larsgaard. See the ALA MAGERT schedule for details.

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No-Cost Getting Started with GIS Course Covers GIS Concepts

Getting Started with GIS is a Web course available at no cost through ESRI Training and Education. This course is appropriate for those with no GIS background or experience who want to learn the basic features of a GIS and a geographic approach to solving problems.

While this course includes hands-on exercises with ArcGIS, it does not focus on software. Instead, it aims to give you a solid conceptual foundation to increase your understanding of GIS. Try it now.

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New from ESRI Press

Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS are Changing Historical Scholarship

Historical GIS has emerged as a new methodology for studying the past, combining GIS software and geospatial methods for historical research and teaching. Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS Are Changing Historical Scholarship is a fascinating new book that introduces readers to the use of GIS for exploring historical questions. As a research method, GIS offers an unprecedented range of tools to visualize historical information in its geographic context, examine it at different scales, investigate its spatial patterns, and integrate materials from many sources on the basis of shared location. This book includes a supplementary CD containing PowerPoint presentations, instructional videos, notes, and map layers for use with either ArcGIS or ArcExplorer—Java Edition for Education.

Designed Maps: A Sourcebook for GIS Users

This sequel to the highly successful Designing Better Maps offers a graphics-intensive presentation of published maps, providing cartographic examples that GIS users can then adapt for their own needs. Each chapter characterizes a common design decision and includes a demonstration map, which is annotated with specific information needed to reproduce the design such as text fonts, sizes, and styles; line weights, colors, and patterns; marker symbol fonts, sizes, and colors; and fill colors and patterns. The book also includes a valuable task index that explains which ArcGIS 9 tools to use for desired cartographic effects.

Our World GIS Education

The new book series Our World GIS Education helps educators introduce and extend GIS education into primary, secondary, and postsecondary curricula while providing students with tools to build spatial thinking, analysis, and decision-making skills. Each book includes ESRI software, GIS data, exercises, lessons, and more. The books are arranged by levels (1–4), starting with basic and moving through progressively more advanced instruction.

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What’s New in ESRI Data & Maps at ArcGIS 9.3

ESRI Data & Maps has been updated for the ArcGIS 9.3 release. The most significant change is the addition of the StreetMap North America dataset, which includes 2003 Tele Atlas streets for North America as well as current Tele Atlas North America basemap data. This dataset replaces the Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (TIGER) 2000-based StreetMap USA dataset and the Canada dataset. In the United States, the 110th Congressional Districts were added and many other datasets were updated to their most current versions including all Tele Atlas census boundary and landmark layers as well as all Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) cultural points.

At the world level, a new Census IPC Demographics table was added to include many statistics for 2007. In addition, country codes have been updated to reflect the current political state of the world and country population values have been updated to 2007. For Europe, the AND basemap layers and the demographic/socioeconomic thematic data at the NUTS 0, 1, 2, and 3 levels have all been updated.

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2008/2013 Demographic Data Now Available

The U.S. demographic landscape is changing—people are moving, aging, establishing households, buying second homes, and anticipating retirement. ESRI revised its 2008 demographic data methodologies to capture the intricacies of this changing landscape and ensure the accuracy of its demographic data. ESRI’s 2008/2013 demographic data is available for standard geographies such as United States, state, county, census tract, and block group. The data can be delivered via CD, DVD, e-mail, or FTP and is available in a variety of formats such as Excel, shapefile, and comma-separated variable (CSV). Learn more.

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