GIS-based index to scanned topographic maps of the world, scales 1:50,000 to 1:125,000.
All,
I have created a SINGLE, interactive, GIS-based, spatial/visual index to the scanned topographic maps of the world. This website, hosted by ESRI’s cloud, contains maps at scales from 1:50,000 to 1:125,000. It is free, and is not related to the holdings of any library.
The scans of the paper topographic maps of the world are hosted in a variety of places. This brings them all together in one, easy-to-use website. The scans themselves are provided by a variety of sources, but in particular, the University of Texas’ Perry-Castañeda Library and the University of Florida.
A click on a highlighted quadrangle reveals a pop-up box that contains information about the individual paper maps–series name, sheet name, sheet number, year, etc.—as well as a link to the scanned map. Not all information is available for every map.
The process to make these websites involved using ArcGIS to create indexes for each individual map set and populate the indexes with data obtained from a variety of sources, including the maps themselves, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee American Geographic Society (AGS) Library, Yale University, University of Texas’ Perry-Castañeda Library, GeoKatalog 2 by ILH Scientific Cartography, World Mapping Today by R.B. Parry & C.R. Perkins, EastView, and Omni Resources. After each index was made, I created a “service” on arcgis.com. Eventually, I combined the indexes into these master websites, hosted by ESRI’s cloud. The sites were constructed using their “storytelling” template.
This website is meant to be a culmination of a large, cooperative project. As you can see, this is less than a complete site; I am hopeful that others will create data sets that can be added to this website. If you would like to add information to this index, please contact me.
Christopher J.J. Thiry
Map Librarian
Colorado School of Mines
1400 Illinois
Golden, CO 80401
p. 303-273-3697
f. 303-273-3199
cthiry@mines.edu
http://library.mines.edu/
(10/23/2013)