Mapping This and That

Mapping LA’s Neighborhoods: community focused mapping effort from the LA Times…

Welcome to The Times’ map of the neighborhoods of Los Angeles, your portal to our new community pages for the city… These neighborhoods were built with your help… readers didn’t just comment on the boundaries; hundreds sent notes — short essays really — on the places they live. They were informative, humorous, thought-provoking and often eloquent. We hope to keep that conversation going. Please use these pages to tell us more about the places you live.

Know Your Place – Headmap manifesto and the spatialised internet revolution…

The Internet has already started leaking into the real world. Headmap argues that when it gets truly loose the world will be new again.

Geospatial Revolution Project – “the location of anything is becoming everything”…

We live in the Global Location Age. “Where am I?” is being replaced by, “Where am I in relation to everything else?”

Album Cover Atlas… “Word Magazine readers have been busy building this map showing where iconic album cover photographs were taken.”

Revised Map of Europe…

Searching for User-Generated Maps

Google has made it easier to find map mashups, user generated maps, my maps, user maps, community maps… whatever you wanna call them. Just go to Google Maps and you’ll see a “Show search options” link to the right of the search button. Choose the last option in the pull-down menu to search for “User-created content.” The Google Lat Long blog notes that:

This last option is particularly useful for exploring the world from the vantage point of true local experts. Here are some cool searches I was able to do: “Windsurfing in San Francisco” shows windsurfing spots around the Bay Area from YouTube, virtualglobetrotting and Flickr (while business search will show windsurfing business listings)

Use this search functionality to see the various types of maps that are being created by/for/about your community. As you can see in screen snippet above (I think you can — why is screen capture so difficult for me?!), I’ve been using it to identify some of the ways that libraries are using custom maps. There are some nice library-related map mashups (shmaps?…  there’s a portmanteau that will NOT catch on) out there! I’ll try to highlight some in future posts.

Billy’s Bed, As a Map

I love maps and monitor a bunch of map blogs. Geography can be confusing and maps help me remember that France is a country. And that toddlers know more than I do.

Anyway, I live in Buffalo, NY in an old drafty house and it’s mighty cold these days… And with a hair line further along in its flight than is worth battling, I shave my head (well, only the sides, really, the top part kinda takes care of itself). The result is one cold librarian… So before I begin my commute home and head out into what looks like a vigorously shaken snow globe… Here’s a quick link to a simple map posted on Making Maps: DIY Cartography from a 1910 edition of Life that really stuck a chord with me:

Libraries, Tanning Salons and Janitor Service

Google has been making so many enhancements to Google Maps that it’s hard to keep up — My Maps, integrating real time traffic, editable click and drag directions, street views .  Now Google has made it a lot easier to embed maps in a website. Embedding a map in a website used to require wrangling with the Google Maps API, but now it’s basically copy and paste.

This is a great app that libraries can leverage to make it easier for people find them. Any library that uses a Google Map might also want to modify/enhance the library’s listing in Google Maps — they’ve made it easy to do at their Local Business Center (Yahoo! listings can also be modified at their Local Listings page). Add a few photos, highlight a web page, showcase a service…

Think of Google Maps as an enhanced online Yellow Pages service that displays its listings geographically using maps. Do people really use the Yellow Pages to find the local library? Well, libraries came in at #133 on the Yellow Pages Association’s “Top 300 Headings 2006,” just ahead of Tanning Salons, Loans, Gutters, Party Supplies, and Janitor Service…

While you’re modifying your library’s listing in Google Maps, why not add other local businesses in your community — become a Google Business Referral Representative and make a little cash for the library!

My Maps, Your Library

Google’s My Maps is making it really easy to create snazzy customized maps. There is no separate URL for My Maps, just go to regular old Google Maps and click on the My Maps tab. Here’s the help page but the easiest way to get a sense of what you can do with My Maps is to just check some out…

• The most common library My Map is a map all of the library locations within a library system or geographic area. Some nice examples are: the Seattle Public Library locations, Carnegie Library Sites Worldwide, libraries in Southern California, Central California Public Library Outlets (libraries as “outlets”… wonder if the books are cheaper there).

• Here’s a cool one, the Learning 2.0 throughout the World map: “A map of libraries who have participated in the Learning 2.0 program created by Helene Blowers at PLCMC.”

• Here’s a map from the Registry of Open Access Repositories that uses screen shots as push pins.

• A library in Illinois used My Maps to effectively demonstrate the breadth of its Interlibrary Loan activity: “Locations of libraries we have loaned materials to in 2006-2007.”

• Map of zine libraries around the world.

Here are a couple of related map articles worth a read… Google Maps is Changing the Way We See the World from Wired and With Tools on Web, Amateurs Reshape Mapmaking from the NY Times.

A World of Maps @ Your Library

Funny videos from the University at Washington Library promoting their extensive Map Collection…

Part 2 here. Found via The Map Room.