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.

The UC Berkeley Geospatial Innovation Facility (GIF), the Bay Area Automated Mapping Association (BAAMA), and the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) Nor Cal Region are sponsoring a GIS Day event on campus from 3-8:30pm on GIS Day, November 18, 2009. The GIS Day 2009 event will take place in and around the GIF, located in 111 Mulford Hall on the west side of campus.

The program is presented in two sessions, a university/higher education session and a professional session. A schedule of events and a call for presentations and posters can be found on the GIF's GIS Day site. Attendance is free, but you are asked to RSVP if you plan to attend.

Information from last year's GIS Day 2008 events at the GIF can be found on the site as well.

National Public Radio (NPR) has posted an interesting map visualization of the United States' electric grid. Users can add and remove various layers from the map including existing lines (from 345 - 1,000kV), proposed lines, sources of power at power plants, solar power transmission lines, and wind power transmission lines. Additionally, the map displays the location and production levels of power plants around the United States. In terms of green energy, the map displays potential for wind and solar power as well as the lines in place to transmit that power to users.

From the map' site: "The U.S. electric grid is a complex network of independently owned and operated power plants and transmission lines. Aging infrastructure, combined with a rise in domestic electricity consumption, has forced experts to critically examine the status and health of the nation's electrical systems."

The map's source data are from a range of sources that include: American Electric Power, American Wind Energy Association, Center for American Progress, Department of Energy, Edison Electric Institute, Energy Information Administration, Electric Power Research Institute, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Western Resource Advocates.

Visualizing the U.S. Electric Grid / Producer: Andrew Prince; Designer: Alyson Hurt; Editors: Avie Schneider
and Vikki Valentine; Supervising Editors: Anne Gudenkauf and Quinn
O'Toole; Additional Research: Jenny Gold; Database and GIS Analysis:
Robert Benincasa 

ESRI has made an index to over 80,000 articles, reports, conference proceedings, books, and journals available online through the ESRI Library. Users can search either keywords or, using an advanced search function, for specific fields, dates, and resources. From the site: "This bibliography covers the literature of geographic information systems, science, and technology. It indexes journals, conference proceedings, books, and reports from the origins of GIS to the present."

The site also contains a link to the GIS Dictionary, a useful glossary of GIS terms.

Full text PDFs of some articles are available through the site. Other publications can be found using either OskiCat for UC Berkeley campus libraries or NextGen Melvyl for UC-wide and worldwide libraries.