Map Library Research Articles

Visualizing the library as place

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to share the research processes and results of secondary analysis using GIS to map usage of a university library to contribute to ongoing efforts to help identify how library spaces are used to explain how university libraries can continue to evolve as teaching, learning, and shared communities of scholars. This paper details the use of ArcGIS to visualize where students are in the library in order to explain how this method can used by libraries to visualize the use of their facilities. Design/methodology/approach – This research utilized secondary analysis of data collected during seating sweeps; through secondary analysis, data were analyzed and visualized in ArcGIS. The seating sweeps were conducted three times a day during a sample week, with researchers noting on maps of the library floor plan where students were sitting. Data were entered into an ArcGIS database file and mapped to display usage directly on the library map to improve stakeholders’ understanding of the ways students are using the library as a place. Findings – Even though this project used consistent instruments and procedural instructions and trained observers, a combination of factors resulted in an incomplete data set, including the length of time between research design and data collection and lack of agreement about the use of map worksheets. It was still possible to make maps that depict heavier and lighter areas of use, present data to library stakeholders, and show what can be accomplished when data are collected on copies of the floor plan. Research limitations/implications – This research is limited by being a conducted in one university library, but the implications far outweigh the limitations. While bar and pie charts are effective at visualizing data, they do not provide a way to visualize where activities occur; maps provide multi-layered visualization, allowing libraries to visualize the same usage data as bar, pie, or other charts in addition to seeing where that usage occurs. The implications for librarianship include better understanding of how library spaces are used and the ability to use visually appealing maps to demonstrate the library’s use, value, and impact. Originality/value – Mapping library statistics is an area that has been growing in the last decade, but practical examples of using GIS to map facility usage are few. This paper explains in detail how the mapping process works and how libraries of all types can adapt this method for their own usage assessments to more vividly depict the value and impact of the library facility as a place.

Beginning with Swem: One Hundred Years of Innovations in the Library of Virginia's Map Collection

The Library of Virginia (LVA) in Richmond was established as the state library in 1823. Maps were a part of the library's early collections. A glimpse into the library's early map collecting efforts and the collection itself highlights innovations in conserving, cataloging, and promoting the library's maps. An exploration of the challenges that arose in this early map collection reveals the accomplishments of librarians and archivists who worked closely with LVA's map collection. Earl Gregg Swem compiled the seminal Virginia cartobibliography, referred to as “Swem.” Wilmer L. Hall applied a map classification system for LVA's maps. And Marianne McKee spearheaded the online cataloging of LVA's map collection, collaborated with philanthropist Alan Voorhees to digitize United States Civil War maps with the Library of Congress and the Virginia Historical Society, and promoted scholarship using the map collection in publications, symposia, exhibitions, and lectures. Hence, Swem, Hall, and McKee, through their resourcefulness at LVA, contributed to the larger field of map librarianship. Their ingenuity provided the foundation for evolutions in LVA's map collection, especially related to growing, cataloging, and promoting the collection that has made it a valuable resource for those interested in Virginia maps and Virginia's place in the geographic imagination. This article first reviews this foundation and then addresses later developments in map cataloging that pertain to organizing and promoting LVA's map collection.

Map Room

Research Article| May 01 2016 Map Room Chris Salvano Chris Salvano chris salvano is Map Curator in the Department of Geography Map Library at California State University, Northridge. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar California History (2016) 93 (2): 2–3. https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2016.93.2.2 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Chris Salvano; Map Room. California History 1 May 2016; 93 (2): 2–3. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2016.93.2.2 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentCalifornia History Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2016 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Reprints and Permissions web page, http://www.ucpress.edu/journals.php?p=reprints.2016 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Digital soil mapping at local scale using a multi-depth Vis–NIR spectral library and terrain attributes

Conventional soil mapping is costly and time consuming. Therefore, the development of quick, cheap, but accurate methods is required. Several studies highlight the importance of developing regional soil spectral libraries for digital soil mapping, but few studies report on the use of these libraries to aid digital mapping of soil types. This study aims to produce a digital soil map using as training set Visible and Near Infra-Red (Vis–NIR) spectra from local soil samples, a regional spectral library and terrain attributes. The soils were sampled in 162 locations on a 270-ha farm in the municipality of Piracicaba, São Paulo, Brazil. Spectra from topsoil and subsoil were measured in laboratory (400–2500nm) and arranged as multi-depth spectra. Information was summarized by principal component analysis. Regression tree models were calibrated to predict principal components (PC) scores based on terrain attributes. After calibration, the models were applied to the entire study site, resulting in PC score maps. Fuzzy c-means and PC maps were used to define the soil mapping units (MU). Based on fuzzy centroids, representative samples (RS) were defined to the MU. Munsell soil color and soil order were predicted from soil spectra and used to characterize the MU. The regression tree model had a good fit for PC1, with an r2 of 0.92, and a satisfactory r2 for PC3, PC4, and PC5, respectively 0.58, 0.66 and 0.53. The fuzzy clustering defined seven MU. The R2 for Munsell color predictions were 0.94 (hue), 0.96 (value) and 0.73 (chroma). Soil order had good agreement in validation, with kappa coefficient of 0.41. The methodology indicates the potential of Vis–NIR spectra to improve soil mapping campaigns and consequently provides a product similar to a conventional soil map.

The Brain Analysis Library of Spatial maps and Atlases (BALSA) database

We report on a new neuroimaging database, BALSA, that is a repository for extensively analyzed neuroimaging datasets from humans and nonhuman primates. BALSA is organized into two distinct sections. BALSA Reference is a curated repository of reference data accurately mapped to brain atlas surfaces and volumes, including various types of anatomically and functionally derived spatial maps as well as brain connectivity. BALSA Studies is a repository of extensively analyzed neuroimaging and neuroanatomical datasets associated with specific published studies, as voluntarily submitted by authors. It is particularly well suited for sharing of neuroimaging data as displayed in published figures. Uploading and downloading of data to BALSA involves ‘scene’ files that replicate how datasets appear in Connectome Workbench visualization software. Altogether, BALSA offers efficient access to richly informative datasets that are related to but transcend the images available in scientific publications.

Georgia Library Spotlight - Map and Government Information Library, University of Georgia Libraries

Georgia Library Spotlight - Map and Government Information Library, University of Georgia Libraries

4D-SAS: A Distributed Dynamic-Data Driven Simulation and Analysis System for Massive Spatial Agent-Based Modeling

Significant computation challenges are emerging as agent-based modeling becomes more complicated and dynamically data-driven. In this context, parallel simulation is an attractive solution when dealing with massive data and computation requirements. Nearly all the available distributed simulation systems, however, do not support geospatial phenomena modeling, dynamic data injection, and real-time visualization. To tackle these problems, we propose a distributed dynamic-data driven simulation and analysis system (4D-SAS) specifically for massive spatial agent-based modeling to support real-time representation and analysis of geospatial phenomena. To accomplish large-scale geospatial problem-solving, the 4D-SAS system was spatially enabled to support geospatial model development and employs high-performance computing to improve simulation performance. It can automatically decompose simulation tasks and distribute them among computing nodes following two common schemes: order division or spatial decomposition. Moreover, it provides streaming channels and a storage database to incorporate dynamic data into simulation models; updating agent context in real-time. A new online visualization module was developed based on a GIS mapping library, SharpMap, for an animated display of model execution to help clients understand the model outputs efficiently. To evaluate the system’s efficiency and scalability, two different spatially explicitly agent-based models, an en-route choice model, and a forest fire propagation model, were created on 4D-SAS. Simulation results illustrate that 4D-SAS provides an efficient platform for dynamic data-driven geospatial modeling, e.g., both discrete multi-agent simulation and grid-based cellular automata, demonstrating efficient support for massive parallel simulation. The parallel efficiency of the two models is above 0.7 and remains nearly stable in our experiments.

Map Room

Research Article| February 01 2016 Map Room Chris Salvano Chris Salvano chris salvano is Map Curator in the Department of Geography Map Library at California State University, Northridge. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar California History (2016) 93 (1): 2–3. https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2016.93.1.2 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Chris Salvano; Map Room. California History 1 February 2016; 93 (1): 2–3. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2016.93.1.2 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentCalifornia History Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2016 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Reprints and Permissions web page, http://www.ucpress.edu/journals.php?p=reprints.2016 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Placing Data in the Land of 10,000 Lakes: Navigating the History and Future of Geospatial Data Production, Stewardship, and Archiving in Minnesota

Thanks to effective collection development and preservation, when researchers come to the John R. Borchert Map Library at the University of Minnesota today, they can access original plat maps and a...

SalHUD--A Graphical Interface to Public Health Data in Puerto Rico.

Purpose: This paper describes SalHUD, a prototype web-based application for visualizing health data from Puerto Rico. Our initial focus was to provide interactive maps displaying years of potential life lost (YPLL). Methods: The public-use mortality file for year 2008 was downloaded from the Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics website. Data was processed with R, Python and EpiInfo to calculate years of potential life lost for the leading causes of death on each of the 78 municipalities in the island. Death records were classified according to ICD-10 codes. YPLL for each municipality was integrated into AtlasPR, a D3 Javascript map library. Additional Javascript, HTML and CSS programing was required to display maps as a web-based interface. Results: YPLL for all municipalities are displayed on a map of Puerto Rico for each of the ten leading causes of death and for all causes combined, so users may dynamically explore the impact of premature mortality. Discussion: This work is the first step in providing the general public in Puerto Rico with user-friendly, interactive, visual access to public health data that is usually published in numerical, text-based media.

Development of an open source tool for mapping disease clusters

BackgroundMapping is an important step in investigations of infectious disease outbreaks. Despite advances in molecular characterisation of pathogens that allow delineation of outbreaks with greater precision, geospatial methods that complement these analyses are rarely used in real time. Barriers include lack of flexibility, expense of specialised software, and the need for trained personnel. This study aimed to develop a tool with free, open source software that could be used by public health professionals to display clusters of disease on a map, and to demonstrate its utility through the exemplar of molecular clusters of tuberculosis in London. MethodsWe developed a bespoke interactive mapping tool using Shiny, a web application framework for the statistical software package, R. Mapping was enabled using Leaflet, a JavaScript library for interactive mapping, through the R package leaflet. Data were extracted from the Enhanced Tuberculosis Surveillance System for cases of tuberculosis with a residential postcode in London, who were part of a molecular cluster, and were notified between Jan 1, 2010, and Dec 31, 2013. FindingsData subsets can be interactively displayed on the basis of cluster name, notification date, demographics, and reported risk factors. In addition to mapping, epidemic curves and summary tables are automatically produced. The tool was used to explore 3194 cases of tuberculosis in 767 clusters in London, and allowed rapid overview of the geographical, temporal, and epidemiological features to support cluster investigation. InterpretationGeographical displays of molecular data can enhance understanding of disease transmission. Advantages of the tool developed in this study include: flexibility, allowing user-defined subsets of data in any geographical location to be displayed; potential adaptability to other geocoded health or other contextual data; and a web interface, which is user-friendly, needs minimal training to operate, and does not require upload of identifiable information to the internet. A potential limitation is maintenance of code, although the use of open source software also benefits from support and improvement from the wider developer community. Future work will involve testing of the tool with potential users to assess its utility in practice. FundingCMS is funded by the Farr Institute of Health Informatics Research.

IMPLEMENTATION OF OPEN-SOURCE WEB MAPPING TECHNOLOGIES TO SUPPORT MONITORING OF GOVERNMENTAL SCHEMES

Abstract. Several schemes are undertaken by the government to uplift social and economic condition of people. The monitoring of these schemes is done through information technology where involvement of Geographic Information System (GIS) is lacking. To demonstrate the benefits of thematic mapping as a tool for assisting the officials in making decisions, a web mapping application for three government programs such as Mother and Child Tracking system (MCTS), Telangana State Housing Corporation Limited (TSHCL) and Ground Water Quality Mapping (GWQM) has been built. Indeed the three applications depicted the distribution of various parameters thematically and helped in identifying the areas with higher and weaker distributions. Based on the three applications, the study tends to find similarities of many government schemes reflecting the nature of thematic mapping and hence deduces to implement this kind of approach for other schemes as well. These applications have been developed using SharpMap Csharp library which is a free and open source mapping library for developing geospatial applications. The study highlights upon the cost benefits of SharpMap and brings out the advantage of this library over proprietary vendors and further discusses its advantages over other open source libraries as well.

Tipología de recursos astronómicos históricos y fondos documentales en las cartotecas españolas: estado de la cuestión

The state of the art about a type of specialised resource with great historical and scientific value is presented: the astronomical documentation. First of all, the main types of astronomical resources are defined focusing on their historical evolution. Secondly, the result of a survey carried out between April and May 2014 about the astronomical collections in Spanish map libraries and archives is shown taking as a reference the IBERCARTO directory of 2012. Conclusions show that almost half of queried libraries and archives map have these type of documents, but disseminated in different collections. Moreover, around 70% of the institutions have catalogued all of their astronomical documentation and have used the classical encoding (MARC 21) and cataloguing standards (ISBD and ISAD(G)), although recent studies have shown that these standards are not the most suitable ones to describe it. Hence, a satisfactory scientific information retrieval is not achieved.

Collaborative Approaches to the Management of Geospatial Data Collections in Canadian Academic Libraries: A Historical Case Study

The Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) is a consortium of the twenty-one university libraries in Ontario, Canada. Since 1967, OCUL member institutions have worked together to share costs and workload through collective purchasing and licensing of information resources and more recently through the establishment of a shared digital infrastructure known as Scholars Portal. Under the auspices of OCUL, Ontario's university map librarians formed the OCUL Map Group in 1973 to seek opportunities to communicate and collaborate to improve the collections and services they offer their users. The opportunities provided by collaboration have ensured a greater capacity to manage evolving collections of geospatial data. The group has served as a community of practice, which has provided educational opportunities and facilitated collaborative problem solving through a listserv, conference calls, and face-to-face meetings. This collegial environment has also led to the completion of a number of projects, which have resulted in the creation of new technical infrastructures and strategies for sharing the workload of data management tasks. This paper discusses the role of collaboration in OCUL projects and offers some suggestions for others considering embarking on collaborations of their own.

An automatic method for the enrichment of DICOM metadata using biomedical ontologies.

This work is a novel contribution for enriching medical images using semantic annotations with a strategy for unifying different ontologies and instances of DICOM medical files. We present the L-MOM library (Library for Mapping of Ontological Metadata) as a tool for making an automatic mapping between instances of DICOM medical files and different medical ontologies (e.g., FMA, RadLex, MeSH). The main contributions are: i) the domain independent L-MOM library which is able to integrate DICOM metadata with ontologies from different domains; ii) a strategy to automatically annotate DICOM data with universally accepted medical ontologies, and provide values of similarity between ontologies and DICOM metadata; and iii) a framework to traverse ontological concepts that characterized clinical studies of patients registered in the framework catalog.

Brazilian History of Cartography and Map Librarianship according to Jaime Cortesão: The Itamaraty’s lecture course of 1944

Entre 1944 e 1950, o poligrafo portugues Jaime Cortesao leccionou no Ministerio das Relacoes Exteriores do Brasil uma serie de cursos sobre historia da cartografia, o processo de formacao territorial brasileira e mapoteconomia cursos vocacionados, simultaneamente, para a preparacao dos candidatos a carreira diplomatica e a formacao em cartografia e catalogacao do pessoal da Mapoteca do Itamaraty. Estes cursos constituiram uma parcela central da actividade cientifica e cultural que Cortesao realizou no Brasil, tendo estado na genese de algumas das principais obras que escreveu durante os anos em que viveu exilado neste pais (1940-1957). Este artigo centra-se na descricao dos conteudos e do enquadramento cientifico, institucional e politico do primeiro programa de estudos preparado por Cortesao para os seus alunos do Itamaraty, em 1944. Sera dada particular atencao aos sucessivos projectos de programa preparados por Cortesao para o curso desse ano e que antecederam a versao final transmitida nas aulas.

Real-time raster projection for web maps

The virtual globe is the default visualization for Digital Earth applications, but it can only show one half of the Earth. This article introduces user-adjustable, on-the-fly projection of georeferenced raster images for web mapping and web GIS applications. This technique allows users to center a map on arbitrary locations, while still seeing the entire Earth surface. Modern web mapping libraries can apply map projection transformations to vector data in the browser, but they do not currently support the projection of raster images at interactive frame rates. We use the cross-platform WebGL (Web Graphics Library) graphics pipeline for hardware-accelerated projection of raster data in web browsers. Two algorithmic techniques – inverse per-fragment projection, and combined forward per-triangle and inverse per-fragment projection – for georeferenced raster imagery are documented. The resulting raster maps combine the ease of use and flexibility of interactive virtual globes with the ability to show the entire Earth. The adjustable projection of raster imagery allows users to observe global phenomena that are difficult to visualize on virtual globes or traditional maps with static projections.

A visualization and data-sharing tool for ecosystem service maps: Lessons learnt, challenges and the way forward

A plurality in methods, models, terminologies is used to assess, quantify, map and communicate ecosystem services (ES). The Thematic Working Groups on Mapping (TWG4) and Modeling ES (TWG5) of the Ecosystem Service Partnership (ESP), recent literature and expert workshops, have highlighted the need for developing a platform that systematically organizes, visualizes and shares ES maps and related information. This led to the development of the Ecosystem Services Partnership Visualization Tool (ESP-VT), an open-access interactive platform that hosts a catalogue of ES maps with information on indicators, models and used data. Users can upload or download ES maps and associated information. ESP-VT aims at increasing transparency in ES mapping approaches to facilitate the flow of information within the ES community from academics to policy-makers and practitioners. Populating the ESP-VT with ES maps from different geographic locations, across different spatial scales, using different models and with various purposes, leads to a diverse and heterogeneous ES map library. The scientific community has not yet agreed on standards for ES terminology, methodologies and maps. However we do believe that populating and using the ESP-VT can set a basis for developing such standards and serve towards achieving interoperability among the varying ES related tools.

Development of Flood Inundation Libraries using Historical Satellite Data and DEM for Part of Godavari Basin: An Approach Towards Better Flood Management

Abstract. Conventional method of identifying areas to be inundated for issuing flood alert require inputs like discharge data, fine resolution digital elevation model (DEM), software for modelling and technically trained manpower to interpret the results meaningfully. Due to poor availability of these inputs, including good network of historical hydrological observations and limitation of time, quick flood early warning becomes a difficult task. Presently, based on the daily river water level and forecasted water level for major river systems in India, flood alerts are provided which are non-spatial in nature and does not help in understanding the inundation (spatial dimension) which may be caused at various water levels. In the present paper a concept for developing a series of flood-inundation map libraries two approaches are adopted one by correlating inundation extent derived from historical satellite data analysis with the corresponding water level recorded by the gauge station and the other simulation of inundation using digital elevation model (DEM's) is demonstrated for a part of Godavari Basin. The approach explained can be one of quick and cost-effective method for building a library of flood inundation extents, which can be utilized during flood disaster for alerting population and taking the relief and rescue operations. This layer can be visualized from a spatial dimension together with other spatial information like administrative boundaries, transport network, land use and land cover, digital elevation data and satellite images for better understanding and visualization of areas to be inundated spatially on free web based earth visualization portals like ISRO's Bhuvan portal (http://bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in). This can help decision makers in taking quick appropriate measures for warning, planning relief and rescue operations for the population to get affected under that river stage.

Hierarchical task mapping for parallel applications on supercomputers

As the scale of supercomputers grows, so does the size of the interconnect network. Topology-aware task mapping, which maps parallel application processes onto processors to reduce communication cost, becomes increasingly important. Previous works mainly focus on the task mapping between compute nodes (i.e., inter-node mapping), while ignoring the mapping within a node (i.e., intra-node mapping). In this paper, we propose a hierarchical task mapping strategy, which performs both inter-node and intra-node mapping. We consider supercomputers with popular fat-tree and torus network topologies, and introduce two mapping algorithms: (1) a generic recursive tree mapping algorithm, which can handle both inter-node mapping and intra-node mapping; (2) a recursive bipartitioning mapping algorithm for torus topology, which efficiently partitions the compute nodes according to their coordinates. Moreover, a hierarchical task mapping library is developed. Experimental results show that the proposed approach significantly improves the communication performance by up to 77 % with low runtime overhead.