Map of Shark Attacks Available from Ball State University Libraries

Shark map t-shirt from Threadless

Map Attack: Shark Week Begins on Sunday

This Sunday, July 23, marks the beginning of the 29^th annual Shark Week on Discovery Television.  The network devotes a week of special programming devoted to sharks.  On Sunday the network will air “Phelps Versus Shark: Great Gold Versus Great White,” where Olympic Gold Medalist swimmer Michael Phelps will “race” a shark.

The Ball State University Libraries’ GIS Research and Map Collection (GRMC) on the second floor of Bracken Library includes numerous maps about the world’s oceans and their habitat, including sharks.  A popular map available in the GRMC is Shark Attacks of the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico (above, click to enlarge). 

The map was published by Sealake Products in 2006.  It includes descriptive and historical notes about shark attacks of the last century along the eastern coast of the United States and in the Gulf of Mexico.  The types of sharks are shown for each incident with a date, and the map includes photographs of the sharks and actual-size examples of shark teeth.

Maps from the GRMC circulate for two weeks or longer.  For more information, please contact the GRMC at 765-285-1097.

Map of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing

How Far Did Armstrong Moon Walk? Mapping the Lunar Landing

On July 20, 1969, Commander Neil Armstrong and pilot Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon.  Six hours later on July 21, Armstrong stepped out of the lunar module Eagle and became the first human to walk on the moon.  Aldrin joined him on the surface, but the two astronauts did not walk far during the span of more than two hours.

This map (click to enlarge) shows the paths Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the surface of the Moon in comparison to the size of a baseball diamond.  The map was created by historian Eric Jones and is featured in the book Strange Maps: An Atlas of Cartographic Curiosities by Frank Jacobs.  The book is available from the Ball State University Libraries GIS Research and Map Collection (GRMC).

“LM” on the map marks the location of the lunar module.  Armstrong placed a television camera to the left of the module (between third base and home plate).  And the yellow circles mark the location of surface cameras.  The larger circles on the map identify craters of various depths.

For more information about using unique cartographic resources for education and learning, please contact the GRMC at 765-285-1097.

Maps of Warsaw and Hamburg Available from Ball State University Libraries

Maps in the News: Warsaw and Hamburg

Warsaw, Poland is in the news today as the first stop for the President as he travels to Europe for the 2017 G20 Summit.  The Group of Twenty will meet in Hamburg, Germany beginning on July 7.

The Ball State University Libraries GIS Research and Map Collection (GRMC) has a large collection of maps of Poland and Germany.  The GRMC includes a collection of maps of Warsaw, many of which are published in Polish.  Some of the maps are published in Polish, English, Russian, and German.  The maps include street maps, tourist maps, and maps of the city center.  A replica of a bird’s-eye view map of Warsaw from 1780 is also available in the collection.  Most of the maps were published by the communist state-owned cartographic company, Państwowe Przedsiębiorstwo Wydawnictw Kartograficznych. 

The Atlas Collection on the second floor of Bracken Library adjacent to the GRMC also includes a number of Communist-era atlases of Poland.  Poland: A Historical Atlas provides maps about the history of the country.  Environmental conditions and the conservation of natural resources are the focus of Atlas Zasobów, Walorów I Zagroźeń Środowiska Geograficznego Polski (Atlas of Resources, Values, and Degradation of Geographical Environment of Poland).

The city of Hamburg, Germany is incuded on the map, A Traveler’s Map of Germany, published by the National Geographic Society and available from the GRMC.  The GRMC also includes street and tourist maps of Hamburg, Army Map Service city plans from World War II, and a set of topographic maps of Hamburg.  And the Atlas Collection includes road atlases of Hamburg and Germany.

Custom digital maps and map posters of Poland and Germany are also available for download from the GRMC.  The maps may be used for educational research, reports and papers, or exhibits.

The maps from the GRMC circulate for two weeks or longer.  Atlases may be borrowed from the Library for 28 days or longer.

For more information, please contact the GRMC at 765-285-1097.