The online Esri Virtual Campus Library-free for everybody-home to the most comprehensive bibliography on GIS in the world, now features 20,000 references. The Virtual Campus continually increases the amount of resources available to students working on GIS assignments and faculty doing research in the field. The bibliography is also useful to practitioners who wish to stay informed and read about different approaches used in GIS technology and associated applications.

A need for an extensive index of GIS literature becomes more important as GIS technology continues to expand its reach. The Virtual Campus Library focuses on key publications that report topics related to the GIS field including technical developments, various applications, and social context surrounding these applications. A rich store of knowledge from around the world is easily accessed through a searchable index created by the bibliography.

"We envision the Virtual Campus Library as something along the lines of Historical Abstracts or Medline," says Esri Librarian Shelly Sommer. "It is a comprehensive resource for those immersed in GIS."

Major series indexed in the bibliography include conference proceedings from the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping (ACSM), American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS), Esri, and Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA); research reports from the National Center for Geographic Information Analysis (NCGIA); and journal articles from the International Journal of Geographical Information Science and Transactions in GIS. Some references link to full-text copies of the papers, which are stored at the Virtual Campus Library.

The Virtual Campus Library is one part of the Esri Virtual Campus, which provides GIS education and training on the Web for GIS technology, GIS applications, and geographic information science (GIScience). It is one of many educational resources that Esri provides.

Access to the Virtual Campus Library and membership in Esri Virtual Campus are free. Virtual Campus members can e-mail selected library references and save them to their personal campus account. To explore the Esri Training and Education Library. For additional Esri educational resources, go to www.esri.com/training.