Curator's Picks: University of Minnesota
This post is part of a monthly series to highlight our Task Force members' favorite collections or items in the BTAA Geoportal
Project Task Force Members: Ryan Mattke, Head, John R. Borchert Library and Melinda Kernik, Spatial Analyst & Curator.
The University of Minnesota’s contributions to the BTAA Geoportal range from 16th century maps of Asia to geospatial data created using mid-20th century maps, to born-digital geospatial data sets published earlier this year.
Asiae Nova Descriptio (1579)
This map of Asia is the oldest color map in our collection. It was published by Abraham Ortelius around 1579 and is one of over 1,500 historical maps available from the University of Minnesota Libraries.
Caption: Asiae Nova Descriptio (1579)
Twin Cities Land Use 1958
This geospatial data set was created by extracting the data from a paper map in the John R. Borchert Map Library collection. A faculty researcher extracted the data for a research study and later deposited the data in the Data Repository for the University of Minnesota. As of July 2019, there are a total of 15 geospatial data sets from the Data Repository available through the BTAA Geoportal.
