The United States Federal Government, as part of the Open Government Initiative, has recently unveiled a new web portal for all types of government data. "Data.gov increases the ability of the public to easily find, download, and use datasets that are generated and held by the Federal Government. Data.gov provides descriptions of the Federal datasets (metadata), information about how to access the datasets, and tools that leverage government datasets."

Currently, Federal, Executive Branch data is available, but more datasets are scheduled to be added.

There are a few GIS data sets available through the site. Users can limit their searches by file type including KML/KMZ for Google Earth and ESRI compatible formats. One nice feature is that Data.gov can be a one-stop location to search for geographic and non-geographic data.

Other online sources for Federal GIS data include: The National Map, Geospatial One Stop, and the U.S. Census Bureau's TIGER, TIGER/Line, and TIGER-related products page.

There's a new library catalog on the way. In summer, 2009, OskiCat will replace Pathfinder and Gladis, which will both be retired, as the online catalog for UC Berkeley libraries. OskiCat includes all library materials listed in Pathfinder and GLADIS, plus items in the Institute of Governmental Studies and Transportation Studies Libraries and the Water Resources Center Archives.

OskiCat combines the functions of Pathfinder and GLADIS, and adds some new features.
With OskiCat you will be able to:

•     Find books & journals from more UCB campus libraries.
•     Limit results to your preferred libraries & save your searches.
•     Limit results to online or available items.
•     Find course reserves quickly & easily.
•     View status of individual volumes & journal issues.
•     Quickly see what items you have checked out.
•     Easily renew items online.
•     Request materials checked out to another borrower.
•     Get e-mail notices when your items are about to be due.
•     Get updates on items you have requested from storage.
•     ... And much more!

Heather Thams of the Biosciences and Natural Resources Library, in collaboration with the OskiCat Public Information Group, has produced a short movie providing an overview of OskiCat.

Summer hours begin at the Earth Sciences and Map Library on Thursday, May 21. During the summer, the library will be open during the following hours:

Fall semester hours will begin Wednesday, August 26th. 

The Circulation Desk closes 15 minutes before the library closes.

The American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) and the Petroleum Technology Transfer Council (PTTC)are offering an e-symposium titled: How Tight is Your Gas: Thermal Profiling for Unconventional Oil & Gas on May 21, 2009 at 2pm CDT.

From the AAPG Education page: "This e-symposium is ideal for engineers, geoscientists, geotechs, and operations personnel who are involved in drilling and production operations, as well as those who develop programs for unconventional reservoirs."

Topics to be covered during the e-symposium include:

• Basics of Thermal Profiling
• Applications for & Benefits of Thermal Profiling in Unconventional O&G Reservoirs
• Fiber Optic-Based Sensor Deployment
• Data Visualization and Interpretation
• Getting Started – What you Need to Know

More information is available on the AAPG Education page.

Are you working on a specific place in another country? Interested in finding out if the library has topographic maps of Peru, China, and the former Soviet Union? Would you like to see what map sheets are held by the library without having to leave your office or house?

The Earth Sciences and Map Library has recently digitized nearly all of the indexes for map sets in the library and placed them online. Users can browse the list or use the "Find" functionality in their browser to find map sets for their area of interest.

The indexes can be sorted by area and call number by clicking on the column headings. In the future, each map set will be linked to its corresponding catalog record from the page.

Currently, this list does not include the Army Map Service (AMS) index maps which can be found on a separate page.