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The Earth Sciences and Map Library is now on del.icio.us. Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering bookmarks online. It's also a great way to share sources of information with other users who share your same interests.

We've added a few bookmarks from our site and are uploading more each day. Many of the bookmarks being tagged are from sources around the web that the library staff use in the course of finding information for users.

If you have a del.icio.us account, please feel free to subscribe to our tags or add the library to your network. If you don't currenlty use del.icio.us, check it out!

The Earth Sciences and Map Library will be closed from Thursday, November 22nd through Sunday, November 25th for the Thanksgiving holiday. Regular semester hours will resume on Monday, November 26th:

The library will be open until 7pm on Wednesday, November 21. Other campus libraries may have different open ours during the weekend. Check the library calendar to find hours for all libraries.

Today, November 14, is GIS Day. From the official GIS Day website: "GIS Day provides an international forum for users of geographic information systems (GIS) technology to demonstrate real-world applications that are making a difference in our society. More than 80 countries will participate in holding local events such as corporate open houses, hands-on workshops, community expos, school assemblies, and more."

Here on the Berkeley campus, the Geospatial Imaging and Informatics Facility (GIIF) is hosting a series of events in Mulford Hall from 2-8:30pm. The events are free and open to the public but registration is highly encouraged.

The Earth Sciences and Map Library will be closed on Monday, November 12 in observation of Veteran's Day. The library will be open on Saturday, November 10th and Sunday, November 11th from 1pm-5pm. Regular Fall semester hours will resume on Tuesday, November 13th:

*The Circulation Desk closes 15 minutes before the library closes*

The Historic Topographic Maps of California (HISTOPO) project was first conceived in May 1999 to provide Web access to high use maps from the University of California-Berkeley's Earth Sciences and Map Library's collection. The U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) topographic quadrangles of the San Francisco Bay region were selected for digitizing.

350 maps were carefully selected to represent a historic perspective of the changing landscape of the region from rural to densely urban. Efforts were made to only digitize first editions of quadrangles and not use reprint editions where the date of situation was uncertain. Some editions of the quadrangles were published by the Corps of Engineers, the Army Map Service, or the Defense Mapping Agency

Access is provided to both the 15- and 7.5-minute USGS topographic quadrangles, spanning more than 100 years of mapping (1885-1999). Geographic coverage extends from Point Reyes south to Half Moon Bay and east to Antioch, Livermore, and San Jose.

The maps are presented on the site in MrSID format. MrSID files, though they appear to be images like TIFF, JPEG, or GIF files work very differently than other image file types. In order to view them whether online or as a saved file, you need to install the Lizard Tech Express View plug-in.

The trick is to know that what you see isn’t a scalable image. When you print the MrSID files, they print as what is on the screen. The result is more like a screen capture than printing JPEG or TIFF files. With MrSID files, what you see on the screen is what you get on paper.

Below are the steps you can take to either print or save zoomed-in portions of the historic topographic maps from the HISTOPO site:

PRINTING

1. Find the area of the map you’re interested in printing:

2. If you’re satisfied with the view that includes the web page information (e.g. the toolbar button legend), use the print function in the browser (e.g. File | Print or Cntrl + p). The result is:

3. If you’d like to print just the image of the map, right click on the map and select print from the context menu. This will result in:

4. Remember, you can only print the map image that is in the viewer, not the entire map.

5. If you try to print the entire map, it’s going to result in a small, illegible map:

SAVING

You can save MrSID files as TIFF, JPEG, or GIF files for use in Word, PowerPoint, etc. You’re still limited to a portion of the map and the resolution won’t necessarily be as good, but it’s better than scanning a print!

1. Find the area of the map you’re interested in saving:

2. Right click on the image and select “Save As:”

3. Next, choose the format in which you would like to save the image (e.g. jpeg, tiff, geotiff, etc.):

4. You can now edit the image using Photoshop, Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, etc. or import the image into another document or presentation. If you have problems using the HISTOPO site, please contact us at the Earth Sciences and Maps Library.