GIS IN ACTION Research Tool at esri.com 31 Esri’s Online GIS Bibliography Serves as Excellent Resource for Information The Esri GIS Bibliography, free on the Esri Training and Education Web site, 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. Dr. Duane F. Marble, professor emeritus of geography at Ohio State University, began compiling the bibliography in the late 1980s. Because Marble and other academics were each creating individual GIS bibliographies, he saw the need for a more comprehensive public resource. When Marble retired from his academic position, Esri became curator of the bibliography. The staff at the Esri Library in Redlands, California, working with Marble, continues to update the content and maintain the Web site as a free service to the GIS and GIScience community. The Esri GIS Bibliography at www.esri.com/ training/library serves as an excellent resource for scholars, scientists, geographers, cartographers, and professionals in a wide range of industries who want to learn about one or more aspects of GIS technology or geographic information science in their fields. The bibliography references more than 1,000 sources, mostly journals, magazines, conference proceedings, and books. Though mainly abstracts, the bibliography also includes some PDFs of articles, conference proceedings, book chapters, and theses. The bibliography encompasses a vast array of fields and industries, such as marine sciences, health, the environment, defense, land-use planning, surveying, petroleum, and forestry. “Although there are other specialized GIS bibliographies, the Esri resource covers a broad span of disciplines, applications, and theory, as well as representing the history of GIS,” says Marble. “The global reach of GIS is also clear. During the early years, North America, Europe, and Australia dominated the contributions, but now we see significant input from other regions, such as Asia—specifically China.” “Thousands of students and hundreds of professors have used the bibliography as one of their major starting points for GIS research,” says Dr. Michael Gould, Esri’s director of higher education. “Besides being an educational resource, the abstracts and other materials point the way to finding experts in or other sources of information about geospatial research and technology.” Esri librarian Patty Turner says the Esri GIS Bibliography contains all the abstracts or PDFs to full papers for every year of the Esri International User Conference going back to 1993. Many abstracts from the Association of American Geographers’ annual meetings are also posted. Citations also come from hundreds of journals, such as Applied Geography, Cartographica, and the International Journal of Geographic Information Science. Turner adds that the bibliography contains a lot of “gray material,” which means it’s often unavailable anywhere else online. The Esri GIS Bibliography is easy to search using either the basic or advanced search engines. The advanced search includes fields such as title, author, keywords, and abstract, along with the type of material being sought and the year range. Under the search feature is an area where readers can browse for books, conference proceedings, reports, journals, magazines, and other materials. More Information Visit Esri’s online GIS Bibliography at www. esri.com/training/library. Esri on YouTube! We’ve built the perfect partner to your favorite magazine. pwmag.com In June 2008, Esri launched its first YouTube video under its esritv channel. Since that time, more than 125 videos have been added to the channel, which cumulatively have garnered over 100,000 views. GIS has a strong visual component, making video a perfect medium to showcase its capabilities. Industry news, market research, job postings and more. All online. All the time. pwmag.com + P ublic W orks magazine, working together to keep you informed. A visit to esritv (www.youtube.com/esritv) reveals a variety of videos, including technical demonstrations, industry seminar presentations, information about Esri events, and many topical subjects. Viewers have responded enthusiastically to Esri’s presence on YouTube and expressed their appreciation for having this as a source of information and instruction. Some videos have been viewed hundreds or even thousands of times. For customers who may be unable to attend Esri events, videos offer insight about current and upcoming ArcGIS product releases and applications. YouTube offers a communication channel that is widely embraced by the GIS global community, as has been documented by esritv channel’s viewership. Esri will continue providing meaningful video content and welcomes viewer comments. We value your opinion. If you view Esri videos or listen to Esri podcasts, please share your feedback with us by taking a short survey at www.esri. com/mediasurvey. There’s no time like right now to check out the most recent releases. More Information To find the esritv channel on YouTube, visit www. youtube.com/esritv.