Electronic Resources Available in GRMC

More than Maps in the Geospatial Resources & Map Collection

The Geospatial Resources & Map Collection in Bracken Library houses thousands of maps and atlases and includes a GIS lab with access to useful geographic data and the latest computer software, but other electronic resources are also available in the GRMC. The GRMC includes a collection of over 250 CD-ROM’s featuring geographic and mapping software.

National Geographic’s Back Roads Explorer 3-D is available in the GRMC. It features topographic maps with updated roads for all fifty states. Users can pan, zoom, and customize a route along one or more maps and see the animated 3-D preview. The software also allows the creation of elevation profiles and printing custom maps.

Delorme’s Topo USA is a similar mapping software that includes topographic coverage of United States. Users can search locations, view street-level detail, calculate routes, view 2-D and 3-D terrain with shaded relief and 20-foot contour intervals, and view land cover features and elevation profiles. The software includes draw and print tools for customizing and printing. The software can also be used to download maps and route directions to Palm OS handheld devices and use the Global Positioning System (GPS) through a connection with a GPS receiver.

The GRMC also includes computer software from TIGER/line featuring digital databases of geographic features. The U.S. Geological Survey published computer software featuring digital raster graphic data from various areas around the United States. A Topographic Field Trip of Washington, D.C. is another CD-ROM from the U.S.G.S. The Collection also includes weather charts from the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, Congressional District Atlases, Census tract outline maps, and Census block maps. Gap analysis GIS data for the United States is also available as an electronic resource in the GRMC.

The AniMap Plus: County Boundary Historical Atlas CD-ROM available in the GRMC displays over 2,000 maps showing all the changing county boundaries in the 48 adjacent states for every year from colonial times to the present. It also includes searchable databases containing more than 240,000 cities, towns and other populated places, over 30,000 historical sites, and 100,000 cemeteries, all of which can be plotted on the maps. This software enables users to locate historical towns which are not on current maps or which are now in a different county.

The GRMC also includes a CD-ROM of the Historic Atlas of Indiana Counties from 1876. The CD-ROM consists of high resolution digital maps in Adobe (PDF) portable document format. Each map includes the following 19th century features: roads, railroads and canals; cities, towns and villages; post offices and government sites; one-room schoolhouses, churches and cemeteries; rivers, streams and ferries; racetracks, fairgrounds and picnic groves; industrial sites, furnaces and mills; and early homesteads and farms.

Some of compact discs in the GRMC are available for use in the GIS lab, but some also circulate for two weeks. For more information about the collection of computer software in the GRMC, contact the staff Monday through Friday from 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M.