UC Berkeley's Geospatial Innovation Facility (GIF) recently announced its Fall 2009 workshop schedule. Classes include:

• Intro to GIS (with either a Social Science or a Natural Resource Science focus)
• Intro to GPS
• Intro to Remote Sensing
• Intro to open source GIS
• Visualize your data in Google Earth, ArcGIS, etc.

and more!

Workshops are available at a subsidized rate of $57 for all UC students
(graduate and undergraduate), faculty, and staff. Workshop fees are
$224 for all non-UC affiliates. Undergraduate students can apply for
financial assistance to take a workshop through the GIF Undergraduate Scholarship Program.

The GIF also offers online guides, fee-based consulting, equipment rentals, and more. Check it out!

Originally posted on the Sheldon Margen Public Health Library News blog.

The Earth Sciences and Map Library will be open the following days and times during the 2009 fall semester:

The Circulation Desk closes 15 minutes before the library closes.

Hours for all UC Berkeley libraries can be found on the library hours page.

The Library is trying out a new online resource for country information: Global Road Warrior. Global Road Warrior is a world-class e-content database offering country-by-country information on 175 nations and territories. It features more than 8 million words of editorial content, over 6,500 color photos and 1,575 maps, all presented in a consistent 92-category framework for each country. Categories include: Society and Culture, Business Culture, Travel, Maps, and Photos.

Created by an international team of researchers, cartographers and writers, Global Road Warrior is continually updated. This database is valuable to multiple educational disciplines and promotes cross-cultural understanding through comparative studies. Global Road Warrior is a great source for students who are preparing to study or travel abroad.

Global Road Warrior is available via computers on campus or through the library proxy server. Users can also connect to Global Road Warrior and other electronic journals through the Electronic Resources page on the library site.

Check out Global Road Warrior and let us know what you think!

From a somewhat unlikely source, Jalopnik, comes a brief tutorial on reading road maps. While many of us here at the Earth Sciences and Map Library wouldn't consider ourselves "old timers," we apparently have some resources that require skills that may have begun to fall by the wayside with the use of portable gps devices and in-car turn-by-turn navigation. Regardless, there is some interesting information in the post, especially good for those who would like to eek out the last of their summer vacation with a road trip.

The library also has quite a few resources for anyone who might be interested in learning more about map reading and interpretation. Specific subjects range from historic to more specialized, like geologic map interpretation. 

Treehugger has an interesting slideshow of 12 subway maps from cities and metropolitan areas around the world. Each slide can be viewed in a smaller thumbnail image or a larger scanned file or digital image. Cartographic commentary, information, and trivia are included with each map. Unfortunately, neither BART nor Muni made the cut. Thanks to Jonathan Crowe at The Map Room for sharing the link.

The Earth Sciences and Map Library has quite a few transit related books and maps available. You can find more information about these resources by searching OskiCat, the online catalog for UC Berkeley Libraries.