In This Issue

• Delicious GIS Resources
• Classic Text Map Use: Reading and Analysis Updated
• GIS Bibliography Reaches 75,000 Citations
• New E-mail Lists for Higher Education Community, Site License Administrators
• Featured Site: NatureServe Explorer and Digital Distribution Maps

Delicious GIS Resources

Delicious.com/gis_resources is a collection of bookmarks tagged by map and GIS librarians, and is a great guide to GIS information on the Web. This collection includes data sources, links to projects/resources by place (e.g., global, by country, by state), links to projects/resources by subject (e.g., census, environment, history), and information about professional organizations and university programs.

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Classic Text Map Use: Reading and Analysis Updated

To unlock the wealth of information in a map, a person must first know how to read one. That’s why the classic book Map Use: Reading and Analysis, Sixth Edition, is valuable for people who work with, study, and appreciate maps and want to improve their map-reading and analysis skills.

The updated sixth edition of Map Use is now available from ESRI Press. With nearly 500 maps, photographs, tables, and charts to illustrate the text, the book teaches the basic concepts of geography and the skills of map reading and analysis. It includes an overview of different types of maps, map scale and projections, grid coordinate systems, relief portrayal, qualitative and quantitative thematic maps, area and volume measures, GPS and maps, and spatial pattern analysis.

Learn more about Map Use: Reading and Analysis, Sixth Edition.

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GIS Bibliography Reaches 75,000 Citations

The ESRI GIS Bibliography recently surpassed 75,000 entries, making it one of the world's largest online repositories for information about geographic information science (GIScience) and GIS technology.

The ESRI GIS Bibliography is a resource for scholars, scientists, and professionals in a wide range of industries who want to learn about GIS technology or geographic information science. The bibliography references more than 1,000 sources—mostly academic journals, magazines, conference proceedings, and books—and covers a range of disciplines including marine sciences, health, the environment, defense, land-use planning, surveying, petroleum, and forestry.

All entries in the GIS bibliography include an abstract and publication details. Full-text articles for some items are available through the ESRI Virtual Campus Library and are linked to the citation. For example, abstracts and papers for every year of the ESRI International User Conference going back to 1993 as well as for the ESRI Education User Conference from 2001 to 2008 are available through the ESRI GIS Bibliography.

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New E-mail Lists for Higher Education Community, Site License Administrators

Two new mailing lists have been created to help faculty and staff at colleges and universities communicate more effectively with each other and ESRI’s education team. HEFACULTY-L and HESL-ADMINS-L have been created at the request of many faculty and staff members to provide a way to ask questions and receive answers in a timely manner and support each other with best practice ideas or links to other resources.

HEFACULTY–L allows faculty and staff at all colleges and universities to ask questions and get answers related to education, research, and administrative use of GIS at their institutions. This can include questions about the use of ESRI's software products in education, curriculum guidance, pedagogy, lab setup, and program marketing and development. Subscribe.

HESL–ADMINS–L is for ESRI site license administrators, coordinators, ESRI Development Center Program (EDC) contacts, faculty, and staff to ask questions or provide answers related to ESRI site license use and software on their campus, including ways to better manage and spread GIS use across campus. Subscribe.

Both mailing lists are moderated and limited to questions related to topics of GIS use in education, research, or administration or ESRI site licenses in higher education. They should not be used to post jobs or resumés or ask technical support questions that are more properly addressed by other ESRI e-mail lists or forums.

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Featured Site: NatureServe Explorer and Digital Distribution Maps

The NatureServe Explorer and Animal Data Download sites provide extensive information about animals and plants in North America. NatureServe Explorer is an online encyclopedia providing conservation status, distribution maps, photographic images, life histories, conservation needs, and more, for thousands of species, searchable by both common and scientific names.

The Animal Data Download site provides access to animal distribution maps in shapefile format for nearly 200 families of birds and mammals. The goal of this project is to document the distribution of animals and make this information freely available to the public to inform conservation and other land-use decisions. The data/maps were compiled by several organizations including NatureServe, Conservation International—Center for Applied Biodiversity Science, The Nature Conservancy—Migratory Bird Program, World Wildlife Fund—United States, and Environment Canada—WILDSPACE.

Data can be downloaded by individual families, or the entire birds and mammals databases can be downloaded. The birds database is available in seven files (659 MB total), while the mammals database is available in a single 76 MB file.

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