Archived Blog Posts

The Ohio State University - future plans

In this post, Ohio State identifies maps they plan to digitize and add to the BTAA Geoportal.

Featured Collection: Minnesota Geospatial Commons

The Minnesota Geospatial Commons serves as the state’s central clearinghouse for public geospatial data. The Commons has grown from about 200 unique datasets at the time of public launch to over 800 today.

Featured Item: Facility Geofence: Iowa

This shapefile shows the Salt and Brine locations for Iowa Department of Transportation facilities. Thanks to this type of data, Iowans can track the movement of their snow plows live.

Featured Item: Wildfires Tracked by DNR: Minnesota

This data layer shows the location of wildfires in Minnesota between 1985 and 2019 (updated weekly). It includes fires for which the MN Department of Natural Resources was the primary responding agency - in other words, wildfires on state lands and some rural private lands. It does not include fires occurring on federal and native American lands (several hundred annually) or those dealt with by local fire departments (several thousand annually). Even with only a subset of events represented, the data provide a fascinating look into the frequency and causes of wildfires across the state!

Illuminating a Subject Through New Connections

What happens when a broad-based discovery tool such as the Big Ten Geoportal brings together datasets that had been created in isolation and places them side-by-side? Scholars experience unprecedented findability and access to datasets which in turn gives rise to new questions and research topics. In short, knowledge is advanced more broadly, more deeply and in a more timely manner.

Featured Collection: IndianaMap

IndianaMap is the largest publicly available collection of Indiana geographic information system (GIS) map data and includes data from all 92 Indiana Counties, as well as many state agencies, academic institutions, and federal agencies.

Featured Collection: Ecological Maps of the Twin Cities

These scanned maps from Ian McHarg's influential 1960s study of the Twin Cities includes dozens of custom maps detailing the climate, geology, hydrology, biota, and built environment of the region, as well as mylar overlays to analyze potential areas for development and preserved open spaces.

Featured Item: Wisconsin Shipwrecks

This item is a shapefile of 631 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes of Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Historical Society compiled the data.

Highlights from Penn State Contributions

Over the course of the past three years Penn State University Libraries has organized and shared through the BTAA geoportal cartographic information resources of two primary types: 1) digital surrogates of original paper maps and atlases; and 2) geospatial datasets.

Featured Collection: Hixson Plat Map Atlases of Iowa

The Hixson Plat Map Atlases of Iowa digital collection contains the 1930 editions of Hixson plat books for 95 of Iowa’s 99 counties.

Featured Resource: Minnesota Historical Aerial Photographs Online (MHAPO)

MHAPO is an application hosted by the University of Minnesota’s Libraries that provides access to over 121,000 digital copies of Minnesota air photos. The photos come from both the University of Minnesota’s John R. Borchert Library collection and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resource’s Landview application. Users can find photos by selecting a point along a flight path that links to a downloadable image.

Curator's Picks: Michigan State University

Michigan State University’s contributions to the BTAA Geoportal are split between keeping an eye on GIS datasets made available around the state of Michigan and contributing items from its own collection of antique and modern maps.

New resources for writing citations

Writing formal citations is the focus of a new user guide and citation tool available from the BTAA Geoportal.

Featured Collection: Illinois Geospatial Data Clearinghouse

The Illinois Geospatial Data Clearinghouse, or Illinois Clearinghouse, is the go-to website for spatial natural resource data in the state of Illinois. As a “node” of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure Clearinghouse Network, the Illinois Clearinghouse distributes geospatial data to facilitate its use by governments and the public.

Archiving local government geospatial data at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Since 2006 the Robinson Map Library at UW-Madison has collected and archived Wisconsin local government geospatial data for academic and public use.

Featured Item: Passenger train movement in Metropolitan Chicago

This map depicts the number of passenger trains arriving and departing from Chicago each day in 1940.

Curator's Picks: University of Minnesota

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.

Contributor Spotlight: University of Chicago

The University of Chicago Library’s first contribution to the BTAA Geoportal was the Social Scientists Map Collection. The digital collection consists of 45 maps produced by UChicago sociologists in the late 19^th to early 20^th centuries who studied the impact of environment on behavior.

Featured Collection: Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps

What’s in this collection?

Over 2,000 scanned historical maps dating from the late 19^th to mid-20^th century and covering much of Pennsylvania. Sanborn fire insurance maps contain a wealth of information about individual properties and were designed to assist insurance agents in determining fire hazard potential.

Geoportal Interface Tidbit: Years

Did you know that you can use facets to find data or maps from a specific range of years?

Contributor Spotlight: Purdue University

Purdue University Libraries has contributed three major collections to BTAA Geoportal, ranging from state geospatial data collection to libraries’ georeferenced imagery collection.

Featured Collection: District of Columbia Open Data

There is no shortage of noteworthy, thought-provoking information coming out of Washington, D.C. these days… That’s right! I’m talking about D.C.’s open geospatial data!

Contributor Spotlight: University of Iowa

Our largest contribution by volume comes from two of our digital collections: the Hixson Plat Map Atlases of Iowa and the Iowa Counties Historic Atlases. By adding these collections to the Big Ten Academic Alliance Geoportal in 2016, University of Iowa was the first institution to contribute a series of scanned historic maps.

Featured Item: Map of the Nimrod Glacier

What is this item?

A scan of a 1966 USGS map.

What geographic region is featured?

Antarctica

Contributor Spotlight: University of Maryland

University of Maryland (UMD) Libraries has contributed to the BTAA Geoportal a few dozen scanned historical maps of 18th and 19th century Maryland from our Maryland Map Collection that focuses on the Chesapeake Bay region. Additionally we have helped to identify and contribute nearly 3,000 state and city-wide geospatial datasets for inclusion in the Geoportal, including open data from Washington, D.C. and Baltimore.

Featured Collection: Polar Geospatial Center

What is in this collection?

398 digitized maps that reflect multiple areas from both poles.

What geographic region is featured?

Both poles – Antarctica and Greenland being most common.

Contributor Spotlight: University of Michigan

Our primary contribution to the BTAA Geoportal has been from the digital map collection from the Stephen S. Clark Library for Maps, Government Information and Data Services. Our geographic strengths include Michigan and the Great Lakes region, Europe, Japan, and South Africa, and we are continuing to scan and post maps from our collection of over 370,000 paper maps.

Contributor Spotlight: Ohio State University

Ohio State University joined the BTAA geoportal in the summer of 2017. Our more recent addition as project collaborators means that in some ways we are “playing catch-up” with our peer institutions that have been involved since the project’s inception, but it also gives us a great opportunity to fill in gaps that existed for Ohio maps and geospatial data before we began contributing to the geoportal.

Contributor Spotlight: Indiana University Bloomington

According to WorldCat, approximately half of the digitized sheet maps in the Indiana Historic Maps collection have never been cataloged before. A large portion of the state’s earliest maps were issued in the annual reports of the Indiana Geological Survey and, while the bound journals were cataloged and readily findable, the individual maps within were not. We’re very excited to make this hidden collection discoverable in the Geoportal. More sheet maps will be added, so be sure to check back!

Contributor Spotlight: Pennsylvania State University

At the start of the BTAA Geoportal project in 2015, the state of Pennsylvania already had a well-developed geospatial data clearinghouse (PASDA) and the Penn State University Libraries had already published online tens of thousands of scanned Sanborn fire insurance maps. What we lacked, however, was a user-friendly online interface with which to search for digital cartographic resources geographically, as well as by keyword and topic regardless of their format (i.e., GIS data OR scanned map).

Contributor Spotlight: Michigan State University

MSU Libraries have submitted a collection of antique scanned maps collections (which focus primarily on Michigan, the Great Lakes region, and Africa).

Contributor Spotlight: University of Wisconsin-Madison

Wisconsin is unique in that we don’t have an official state geoportal of our own. Therefore, we rely heavily on referring users to the BTAA Geoportal to access the geospatial content they need. While many agencies and local offices in Wisconsin provide data access via their own websites, pointing users to the BTAA Geoportal as a single point of entry to discover and download maps and data across our state (and region) is extremely valuable.

Contributor Spotlight: University of Minnesota

The University of Minnesota has contributed public GIS records from the Minnesota Geospatial Commons, the Minnesota Legislative Coordinating Commission, and several individual counties. They have also added many items from the University’s digital repositories, including scanned maps from the John R. Borchert Map Library, GeoTIFFs from the Polar Geospatial Center, research data from the U of M Digital Conservancy, and hundreds of mixed resources from the Minnesota Geological Survey.

New GIS & Scanned Map Records: Fall 2017

New records include Indiana Historic Maps and data from counties in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.

New Features

As of September 2017, the BTAA Geoportal has three new features: Enhanced Metadata Display, Browse for Items on the Map, and Autocomplete for the Search box.

Welcome to Ohio State University and the University of Chicago

This month, we welcomed two new Big Ten Academic Alliance universities to the project, Ohio State University and the University of Chicago. Look for new collections from these contributors coming soon! Our updated map shows that we now represent a contiguous region from the Midwest to the Mid-Atlantic coast.

New records from Washington, D.C. and Scott County, MN; Geospatial Metadata Workshop materials

109 geospatial records were recently added to the geoportal from the City of Chicago’s Open Data Portal, notably dozens of records about public schools in the city. 17 GIS records were added from the City of Bloomington Data Portal.

New Records from the cities of Chicago, IL and Bloomington IN, plus Minor Interface Changes

109 geospatial records were recently added to the geoportal from the City of Chicago’s Open Data Portal, notably dozens of records about public schools in the city. 17 GIS records were added from the City of Bloomington Data Portal.

Springtime News

During March 2017, 802 scanned maps from the University of Michigan Clark Library were added to the geoportal. Several hundred scanned maps from the University of Minnesota’s Borchert Map Library were also added bringing the total number of map records to over 1700.

Love Your Data Week

It is Love Your Data Week and a key part of doing geospatial work is “Finding the Right Data”! The Big Ten Academic Alliance Geoportal strives to make relevant data easy to discover and fit into your workflow. While the data displayed in our portal comes from a variety of sources, it is often possible to access or download the data through our site.

What's New? More Scanned Maps plus Minnesota Legislative GIS Data

We added over 400 scanned map records from university libraries and 24 shapefiles from the Minnesota Legislative Coordinating Commission to the geoportal during January 2017.