BBC News UK has an interesting article about the Waldseemuller map, the first map to use the word "America" to describe the "New World". Frequently referred to as "America's Birth Certificate," the map has an interesting provenance which now includes the distinguished honor of being one of the most expensive items the Library of Congress has ever purchased.

The most recent article by Toby Lester, author of The Fourth Part of the World, sheds some interesting light on the map, including a multilingual pun and a discussion of the map's cartographic importance beyond the use of the word "America."

The Earth Sciences and Map Library has subscribed to a new map and GIS data database, AtoZMapsOnline. This new resource provides over 146,000 digital maps and supplemental material and is available for use on any library computer on campus or via the library proxy server.

AtoZMapsOnline.com’s diverse holdings make it a valuable resource for students of all disciplines. The database includes outline maps, political maps, physical maps, thematic maps, climate change maps, environment maps, historic maps, hurricane maps, earthquake maps, volcano maps, fire maps, animal and plant species distribution maps, current event maps, geology maps, topographic maps, and weather maps. These maps are presented in pdf files which are easily incorporated into presentations, papers, or easily translated into vector lines using graphics software.

Users can download and use the tens of thousands of maps in any way they wish. This includes use for print and electronic reports, so long as the maps are not resold. AtoZMapsOnline can be found either via the Electronic Resources Finder, or as a featured site on the Earth Sciences and Map Library homepage.

From the Open Geodata Blog:

Check out a unique use for Open Street Map data: music! From the artist's, French Letter, site on Band Camp: "This is Washington, DC and the surrounding highways remapped in audio. It is an east-west sweep of the city, so it begins with the slow creep of the Potomac River heading southeast and then hits the chaos of the city. North-South values are mapped to pitch."

Open Street Map data is freely available for many uses and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license. 

Also, take a look at a previous Open Street Map post on this blog.

The Library of Congress Geography and Map Reading Room has released a new website with detailed information about the Library's Sanborn Fire Insurance Map collection.  The site contains a searchable and browseable index of Sanborn Fire Insurance maps as well as detailed descriptions and explanations about important issues in using Sanborn maps such as: line style, map scales, publication dates, and abbreviations. There are also detailed explanations and illustrations of the various keys and legends used in Sanborn maps.

The Earth Sciences and Map Library has a large collection of Sanborn maps of California cities that available for use in both microfilm and digital formats. To access the digital Sanborn maps online, users must access the maps from a campus computer or via the library proxy server. 

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) sponsors the annual GIS for Transportation Symposium (GIS-T). The next symposium will take place April 12-14, 2010 in Charleston, WV. The symposium is an opportunity for "persons in government and private industry who are interested in the use of GIS for transportation purposes to get together and share experiences, see state-of-art software, and learn more about this field. The Symposium annually attracts over 400 Symposium registrants in addition to the 50 exhibitors in the technology hall. "

As part of the symposium, the GIS-T is holding a student paper contest. From the contest site: "The contest is designed to encourage university students to develop solutions to current GIS-T issues. Contestants will be judged on their ability to develop and document useful, original research based on GIS-T issues and to relay their research results in a complete, clear, and well-referenced paper. The winners will present their papers at the 2010 GIS-T symposium."

The deadline for contest submissions is December 11, 2009. 

A full list of eligibility requirements, awards, and judging criteria are available on the GIS-T student paper site.