GIS Resources in the Morris Library

What is GIS?

Geographic Information Systems or GIS is a collection of resources that links data to geography in such a way as to display the data in map form. The University community has access to ArcView GIS. The GIS in the Library is located at the Digital Mapping Station, Student Multimedia Design Center area on the Lower Level of Morris Library. The Library has a variety of depository and commercial GIS data CD-ROMs including depository and commercial. There are also many Internet resources that allow users to download data or customize maps online.

What can GIS do for you?

Whether creating a map for a presentation, a research paper, or, something more challenging, like analyzing census data and creating your own data, GIS is a valuable resource. The concept behind GIS is taking geographic data, such as streets, railroad tracks, streams, etc. and combining this with demographic data, including age, sex, and income, to create a map that illustrates where or how much of the demographic area is comprised of the specific demographic characteristics. For example, one could create a map showing where the school districts are in relation to the age-group of an area. By using colors, symbols, charts, tables, or labels, one can create a map that is equally visually appealing and scholarly accurate.

Disciplines that use GIS technology include agriculture, political science, history, geography, geology, urban studies, economics, business, marketing, marine studies,archaeology, and any others that need to manipulate geographically-referenced information.

Digital Mapping Station in Morris Library

The Digital Mapping Station is located in the lower level of Morris Library in the Student Multimedia Design Center area. This computer station gives access to the latest version of ESRI's ArcView software. There is a color printer available at the station.

Make an appointment to have one-on-one GIS assistance with Shelly McCoy, Head, .

Besides having ESRI standard data loaded, the Digital Mapping Station and the Microforms area houses and gives access to a variety of GIS data including:

Internet Resources

There are many websites that have their own GIS web mapping application. Others have data available for download in ArcInfo or ArcView format. Still many more sites have data that you can download and convert into .dbf tables for import into GIS. The Digital Mapping Station has many of these sites bookmarked on Netscape by catagories such as DE Data Resources and Mapping Organizations. The Mapping Station has sites that contain digitized maps as well.

This Morris Library subject guide Cartographic Information, Maps, and Spatial Data resources contains especially helpful links: http://www2.lib.udel.edu/subj/maps/internet

User Guides specific to the most commonly-used GIS applications at the library are available in print at the Digital Mapping Station and online at the Digital Mapping Station webpage: http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/digital/microcopy/gis/dms.htm

A great starting point on the University website is: www.udel.edu/gis

CD-ROMs

The library owns over 1500 CD-ROM titles. Many of these contain data in a GIS format. These can be found by searching DELCAT using an Advanced Search and chosing Computer File and then entering your search terms using one of the searching mechanisms, such as Keyword(s) anywhere search. Here is a spreadsheet list of some of the CD-ROMs that contain GIS data: gis-cd.xls