Blog topic: Geospatial

The Stanford Libraries' Center for Interdisciplinary Digital Research (CIDR) is proud to share in the announcement of a new publication, by the Stanford University Press, of The Chinese Deathscape: Grave Reform in Modern China, a longstanding collaboration led the publication's editor, Professor Thomas S. Mullaney of the Department of History, and featuring custom design and software development primarily by former CIDR developer David McClure.

This publication is the latest in SU Press's Digital Scholarship series of interactive scholarly works, and the first fully peer-reviewed and professionally published of CIDR's many projects in the digital humanities and computational social sciences.

Sanborn maps are a favorite of any map librarian.  What's not to like about them?  They give us a view into the history of our country in a way that few other maps do.  They show the growth and decline of towns and cities.  They track the changing use of buildings over time.  At times they tell us who lived and worked in specific areas.  We peek into the past to understand what kept people entertained, be it an amusement park, a skating rink, a movie theater, or a bar.  The Sanborn Fire Insurance Company began producing these maps in the late 19th century for towns and cities throughout the United States in order to provide information to insurers about the composition and use of buildings to allow for the correct underwriting of policies.  The maps include: building footprints; building material shown by color, height and number of stories; uses such as dwellings, hotels, churches, and chicken coops; street widths, water pipes, hydrants, and cisterns.  This provides historians, genealogists, urban planners, and ethnologist with a wealth of information about the nation's past.  

The National Geospatial Advisory Committee (NGAC) held its fall meeting September 5-6, 2018 at the National Conservation Training Center, Shepherdstown, West Virginia.  The NGAC is a Federal Advisory Committee to the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC).  The role of the NGAC is to provide advice and recommendations related to the national geospatial program and the development of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure.  Full minutes of the meeting, PowerPoints, and lightning talks are available on the NGAC website.