tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-172802732009-07-07T22:13:14.962-05:00My thoughts and reminders as GIS Librarian at the University of Texas at Arlington. This blog is primarily a way for me to jot down my ideas and also to record notes from other blogs and feeds out there. Everyone is welcome to follow along if you like.mapzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08311375789856797994noreply@blogger.comBlogger222125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17280273.post-60687066268219604072008-09-13T13:42:00.001-05:002008-09-13T13:42:48.708-05:00

After releasing ArcMap2GMap a couple of weeks ago, two persistent bugs have repeatedly been pointed out by users. I want to document these errors and the fixes, both of them quick, here. The script has been updated on the ESRI ArcScripts page with these fixes, so a fresh download should resolve these issues.Download Updated (fixed) ScriptArcMap2GMap PostsBug #1: Process Status Message Not

mapzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08311375789856797994noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17280273.post-83971562718063141822008-09-09T15:22:00.001-05:002008-09-09T15:24:17.246-05:00

Continuation from Pt. 1Our Geographic Accuracy Measurement Procedures - OverviewWe calculate 5 positional accuracy measurements for each georeferenced map. Texas is divided into 4 quadrants, with each quadrant receiving an independent positional accuracy measurement. The fifth measurement is the average accuracy of the 4 quadrants.Each quadrant is further subdivided into 4 sections. At least 4

mapzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08311375789856797994noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17280273.post-36698823847861928772008-09-08T16:06:00.003-05:002008-09-09T13:46:24.791-05:00

We have been undertaking a project, called the Texas Time Machine (TTM), which requires us to georeference statewide historic maps of Texas.Brief overview of TTM:Preparing historical materials for use within GIS for geographic analysis requires a large time commitment and high level of expertise. Once prepared, the researcher still needs to understand the fundamentals of operating a large

mapzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08311375789856797994noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17280273.post-85684004261202034072008-08-28T16:45:00.000-05:002008-08-28T16:45:43.382-05:00

1.Geographic Information Systems Specialist (Bucknell University)"Bucknell University seeks to hire a Geographic Information Systems Specialist for the Library and Information Technology organization... The primary responsibilities of this position are to develop, expand, and support a GIS user community by assisting students and faculty in the selection and use of appropriate GIS technologies;

mapzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08311375789856797994noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17280273.post-31070595101430035892008-08-28T10:29:00.000-05:002008-08-28T10:29:48.964-05:00

ArcMap2GMap: download + (not yet tested for 9.3)Samples:+ Presidential Election Data 2004+ Hodge Podge Sample of Stuff From My Computer+ Health ResourcesFinally completed a major update for the ArcMap2GMap script that exports ArcMap layers to a standalone Google Map webpage.This latest update now includes support for choropleth polygon layers using the gPolygon object. Previous versions included

mapzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08311375789856797994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17280273.post-7395557722561197842008-08-23T14:31:00.009-05:002008-08-23T15:00:48.909-05:00

As always, there are oodles of great GIS-related theses and dissertations out there. After taking a long and deep gander at the latest batch, here are the latest ones to have caught my eye. For previous installments, click here.An object-oriented programming approach for a GIS data-driven simulation model of traffic on an inland waterway. by Sasso, Daniel, Ph.D., University of Louisville, 2008

mapzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08311375789856797994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17280273.post-28925404362008177692008-08-23T14:13:00.002-05:002008-08-23T14:14:22.546-05:00

Been working my fingers to the bone teaching 9 credits last Spring, 6 credits this Summer, and getting ready to teach 6 more this Fall (next week, gulp!).This past Summer was exciting and really stood out, however, as many of the final projects from both courses were exceptionally great. I taught Seminar: Advanced GIS Topics for Real Estate Research and Understanding Geographic Information

mapzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08311375789856797994noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17280273.post-20859208363595596052008-08-20T16:56:00.002-05:002008-08-20T16:57:20.366-05:00

One of the three GIS workshops we have planned for the Fall 2008 semester is entitled 'Predict 2008 Voting Patterns Across Neighborhoods in Texas'. It is not scheduled until late October, so it is oh so far from being done, but here is how we are planning to go about it.By Texas neighborhoods, I really mean that each workshop participant will estimate how voters will vote in each Voter

mapzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08311375789856797994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17280273.post-80088956783357383272008-08-19T19:40:00.003-05:002008-08-19T19:54:50.295-05:00

Dallas Morning News Article: Mapping Oak Cliff's Realities, Possibilities (08/16/08)This recent article spotlights student Charles Jackson's use of GIS in an undergraduate project on the Oak Cliff neighborhood in Dallas, Texas. Charles is a student I assisted with on may GIS projects. For this one in particular, he used GIS to create a Google Map webpage of various resources available in this

mapzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08311375789856797994noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17280273.post-16307400095692835072008-08-19T19:29:00.003-05:002008-08-19T19:39:41.607-05:00

So, it has been a long, long while since my last post here. Why? Ah, oodles of reasons. Most of all, I just kicked a 9-month compulsive WoW habit that impeded and threatened many facets of my work and personal life.To those of you out there who were negatively affected by my obsessive gaming habits, I sincerely apologize. To everyone, I fully intend at this point to resume writing on this

mapzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08311375789856797994noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17280273.post-20823098361444190182007-10-25T07:11:00.000-05:002007-10-25T07:23:27.936-05:00

Workshop This Afternoon!!Download Full Workshop MaterialsView Zohoshow PresentationView HandoutView FlyerView Google Maps DemoThis has been a whirlwind frantic rush to pull together but just about everything is ready to go for this afternoon's GIS workshop. Should be a great one...Dr. Melanie Sattler, Civil & Environmental Engineering professor, will lead the workshop with a 30 minute discussion

mapzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08311375789856797994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17280273.post-51536877683055446322007-10-05T14:53:00.000-05:002007-10-05T15:59:19.231-05:00

Helped an engineering student yesterday to display a table with over 500,000 XY coordinates and convert it to a shapefile. The table the student brought was a 2.5 gig CSV file. It gave me some unexpected troubles.The conclusion is that the manipulation of large tables is often times best done using Microsoft Access. Specifically, converting field types for large tables with hundreds of

mapzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08311375789856797994noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17280273.post-65642345413930262422007-10-03T06:39:00.000-05:002007-10-05T07:21:57.267-05:00

[updated 10/05 to include links to free dissertation abstracts and 24-page previews, compliments of UMI Dissertation Publishing at ProQuest. See comments for more info. Thanks Mike!]Here's the latest installment of GIS-related dissertations that have caught my eye. Previous lists include 11/05, 01/06, 01/06, 04/06, 07/06, 10/06, 04/07. (Of course, this is not a comprehensive list...only

mapzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08311375789856797994noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17280273.post-15546606478329439522007-09-30T21:12:00.000-05:002007-09-30T21:13:00.660-05:00

The confirmation is only preliminary at this point, but I am preparing to teach a GIS Librarianship course next summer (2008) for the University of Arizona's School of Information Resources and Library Science. This course will be 100% distance education, so I encourage any library student or librarian out there with an interest in GIS to consider enrolling. I will post more details here as

mapzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08311375789856797994noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17280273.post-45873459526202515672007-09-30T08:16:00.000-05:002007-09-30T08:17:04.105-05:00

GIS projects must be due soon in many of our classes as folks from all over campus are coming into the GIS Lab for assistance with projecting their data. Funny how everyone from different departments and different classes are all focused on the same thing. Wonder if this has any relationship to how women's menstrual cycles sync after living close together? Does this mean the various

mapzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08311375789856797994noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17280273.post-65481881276260115802007-09-28T10:24:00.000-05:002007-09-28T10:25:05.649-05:00

Yesterday's workshop was a success on every conceivable level.We had 30 participants, which in a 27 PC lab is the best. Breakdown was 4 faculty, 12 grads, 8 undergrads, 2 staff, and 4 non-affiliates (City of Arlington intern, couple of investors, and an alumnus). By the 5 minute mark every seat was taken and a noticeable number of people dropped by and left when they saw how crowded it

mapzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08311375789856797994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17280273.post-38347847308359476162007-09-26T08:34:00.000-05:002007-09-26T09:35:44.618-05:00

Workshop Tomorrow!!Download Full Workshop Materials (coming soon)View Zohoshow PresentationView Handout (1st draft)View FlyerLast week, I posted the basic details about this semester's 3 workshops. Well, after a round of late night shifts, the new hotel workshop is just about ready to go.No doubt about it, there is so much data included in this workshop. Everyone will see that I got carried

mapzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08311375789856797994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17280273.post-20511194857347808412007-09-23T17:44:00.000-05:002007-09-23T18:45:49.017-05:00

Attended a demonstration of the new Texas River Information Management System (TRIMS) in early September at the Ellison Miles Geotechnology Institute (located in Farmers Branch, TX on the Brookhaven College campus). TRIMS went live in late August.This ArcGIS Server driven web mapping application is a fantastic resource for us here in the Trinity River Basin (North-Central, Central, and into

mapzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08311375789856797994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17280273.post-12953781343092110622007-09-23T07:31:00.000-05:002007-09-23T08:32:36.090-05:00

I am teaching the spatial analysis course this semester, and the first two projects everyone is working on is based on a suitability site selection exercise. First, they need to identify the best locations for the development of a new Coast Guard facility on the Gulf Coast. Second, they need to develop an ArcMap Model to automate this suitability process.Here is their exercise scenario (

mapzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08311375789856797994noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17280273.post-58686268839681610322007-09-21T17:00:00.000-05:002007-09-21T17:01:25.887-05:00

Our data users are so loving these new online data subscription options available through products such as the Geolytics On-Line Data & Maps and Simply Map. They can hop online, on or off campus, and access the data they need. These products make accessing demographic and business data as accessible as finding journal articles.I had two faculty this past week alone make an effort to let me know

mapzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08311375789856797994noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17280273.post-51210155626098781242007-09-21T06:33:00.000-05:002007-09-21T17:01:51.271-05:00

Well folks, our library is making the move and has decided to test the possibility of providing research assistance in Second Life (SL). The pilot project will focus exclusively on GIS research assistance, after which we will examine its outcomes and decide how to proceed.So, starting with the public opening of the new Info International Island tomorrow (Friday, 09/21), anyone needing GIS

mapzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08311375789856797994noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17280273.post-88229991810706088842007-09-20T17:20:00.000-05:002007-09-20T17:23:19.513-05:00

Sho’ah’s (שואה) Lasting Impact: Mapping Jewish Migration: http://gis.uta.edu/maus/As we did last year with Mapping the Afghan Population in the US ( see background), the Information Literacy Librarian and I teamed up to create a project that will integrate numeric and spatial resources into the freshman English Composition courses.All sections of Freshman Composition I (app. 60) are reading Maus:

mapzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08311375789856797994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17280273.post-20847653696515388462007-09-19T10:14:00.000-05:002007-09-19T10:28:17.378-05:00

First few weeks of the semester have been a rush, and our first GIS workshop is set for next Thursday. From the Superbowl, to air quality, to flipping houses, we're hoping to make a big splash with this semester's workshop lineup. (For previous workshops, see Spring 2006, Fall 2006, and Spring 2007.)Starting last semester, we began co-presenting the workshops with faculty whose research

mapzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08311375789856797994noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17280273.post-51090475628671367572007-08-14T15:29:00.000-05:002007-08-14T15:30:35.136-05:00

Students from an advanced suitability analysis course this summer needed to create a report that specified the percent of the join layer that intersected the target layer. For example, they needed to calculate the percent of each use from a landuse shapefile that intersect each zip code in Texas. I wrote a quick script for the class that generated the report they needed, but the implications are

mapzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08311375789856797994noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17280273.post-5477844439892701162007-08-11T13:53:00.000-05:002007-08-11T15:26:28.634-05:00

This summer I taught a graduate real estate course exploring the ways GIS can be used select foreclosure listings for possible investment. As far as student satisfaction is concerned, this was the most successful real estate course I taught. The course was very tight and practical, and hopefully everyone will go out and make some big bucks with the skills they learned...well, when the market

mapzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08311375789856797994noreply@blogger.com1