Geography 222 Maps and Mapping
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Description
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Geog 222 Exercise 2: Finding Maps
Revised: 1/20/20
- ASSIGNED in class Fir. February 7
- DUE Mon. February 17 at 1:07 pm
- Exercise Worth: 50 pts
Geography 222 Library Resources for exercises.
Digital Submissions Guide for exercises and exams.
Procedure:
1. Define your home for this exercise (and future exercises): (5 pts)
You will be collecting and creating a mess of maps and information about a particular
place you are familiar with in this and future exercises: home. You will compare your
personal knowledge of your home with the way the place is represented on maps, providing a
bit more of a critical perspective on how maps show us a version of the world.
- "Home" may be a difficult thing to define!
Some of you may not have been born and raised in the US. You can use your non-US home for
many of the exercises, but will have to choose a second home in the US for a few
exercises where we are using data only available for the US. Select a place in the US you
have spent some time in, enough to know the area a bit. If you have not lived in any area
of the US besides Delaware, you can consider Delaware your second home.
Even if you were born in the US, you may have moved around. Select one of these homes -
the one you feel you know the best, or care about the most. It is important that you know
something about the place you decide is your home for this exercise - it should not be a
place you are completely unfamiliar with. Please talk to the instructor if you have any
questions about defining your home!
- Type 1 page: Name your home and describe your relationship to the place
(how long did you live there, how well do you know the place etc.) in a few paragraphs.
International students include comments on both your actual and US home.
- Type 1 page: Once you comment on your home, go to the Claritas
marketing web site and then Zip Code Lookup. Enter your home zip code (for
international students, use your US home). You will be
presented with a page of "prizm segments" (from three different marketing databases) which
define who you are based on where you live. Click on them for more information. Describe how well Claritas has defined your
home in a paragraph. Poke around the website and see what these folks
think you can do with this information. Comment on their suggested uses of the data, and
how it relates to who you are and where you live.
2. Topographic Maps of your Home on the WWW (20 pts)
WARNING: Many WWW map sites depend on sophisticated WWW
technology that can be slow or break down. Expect delays and sites that are temporarily
not working. You may also be using a computer or internet browser that is not compatible
with a particular mapping WWW site. Be patient! If a site is not working, revisit it at a
different time or use a different computer. Given such potential problems, please do not
do the exercise at the last minute. Contact the instructor at least 48 hours before the
due date if you are having persistent problems.
"Topographic Map" defined at Wikipedia
Over the past decade the USGS (United States Geologic Survey) has made an effort to make
its detailed topographic maps of the US available in digital form. You can still order
paper maps, but most are decades out of date. Instead of ordering a paper map (which we
have done in the past in this class), you will download a series of digital topo maps, the
most recent and also the oldest version available for the area around your home (as
defined in the previous section).
You will save two or three high-rez topographic maps, so make sure you are working on a computer
you can save files on, then upload to your shared folder in Drive.
International Students: You have two options: find topographic maps of your US home
or we can try to find a topographic map from around your actual (non U.S.) home.
United States Geologic Survey (USGS) Topographic Maps
Many countries in the world have a series of topographic maps covering all or most of the
country. Topographic means - literally - topos "place" +
graphein "to write." Thus topographic maps are those that show details about a place,
typically elevations, rivers, roads, settlements, etc.
Topographic maps come in a variety of scales: showing more or less of the earth's surface.
Topographic maps that show a small area of the earth's surface - called large scale
topographic maps - can show much detail, buildings, paths, even boulders and fences.
Topographic maps that show a larger area of the earth's surface - with smaller scales -
show less detail.
The USGS Topographic Maps come in a series of different scales. A few of the map series,
at a scale of 1:24,000, 1:100,000, and 1:250,000, cover the entire United States. Other
series cover selected areas of the U.S.
TopoView: Index for and acces to for USGS
1:24,000 scale (7.5 minute) and other scale maps of the U.S.
Terrific Option 1: U.S. Students or International Students who want to use your US Home for this part of the
exercise:
- Go to the TopoView site:
- Click on the 24k circle (burnt umber color!) in the upper right.
- Under Location type in your US home street address and zip code and search
- A list of maps appears to the right: find the newest edition (which still may be decades old), typically at the top of the list
and download the JPEG and KMZ (Google Earth format).
- The JPEG is a graphic file you can open with any graphics viewer or a web browser.
- The KMZ is a version of the map converted to open in Google Earth. You can download (free)
Google Earth Pro for Mac or PC.
- A PDF of the map legend and symbols can be found here.
Open and review the JPEG. Find your home on the map - or as close to it as
you can. If the map is older than the age of your house, it won't be on the map, but
you should be able to find its approximate location.
Open the KMZ in Google Earth. The same map should show up over the top of the
Google Earth imagery. The map is put under Layers and in the Temporary Places folder. If that folder is not
already open, open the folder.
- Right mouse click on Map below the map name.
- select Get Info from the pop up menu
- use the Transparency slider to adjust the transparency of the map, so you can see the imagery below.
Go back to the TopoView site and
find an older topographic map of your home area. This may be a 24k map, but if there is not an older version, you can use a 63K scale
map. This is a map that's approximately the same size as the 24k map, but includes 4 times as much area. Four 24k maps fit in one
63k map. Again, download a JPG and KMZ.
- Type 2 pages: Compare the maps: indicate three things
that strike you as interesting in comparing the newer and older maps of the area
around your home.
Terrific Option 2: International Students: It is not always possible to find detailed topographic maps
of every country, but we can give it the ole' college try. See what you can find on the
two sites below. You can also Google "topographic map" and "online" and "your country" if
you don't find anything at the sites below.
- Type 2 pages: Document your effort to find topographic maps of your home
country and indicate three things
that strike you as interesting in reviewing the area
around your home. Compare the map or maps you find with a Google Map of your home area.
Because the map files are large, don't include them in their entirety
in your exercise. Instead use the Screen Capture feature on your computer to
save an area around your home from each map. See the
Digital Submissions Guide for details.
3. Finding Five Maps of your Home using Online Library Resources (25 pts)
There are a significant number of maps that you won't find with a basic Google search.
An array of search tools, available through the library, provide access to these maps.
- Please use online OWU Library
research tools to locate and find four maps and one library resource (book, article,
etc.) of the area around your home. International students may find maps of
your actual or US home.
- Please ask for help if you are having difficulty finding appropriate maps.
- Try to find the most detailed (large scale) maps you can. Old maps are fine.
- Don't choose a USGS topographic map, as you found several in part 1 of this exercise.
- Don't choose copies of Google (or other online map service) maps.
- Type 2 pages: Include a screen shot of the map or part of it. Provide the appropriate
citation for the map. Document the search strategy you used to find the map
(e.g.., what key words or subject headings did you use). Note any problems you had.
finally, briefly describe the map.
Details for your Search
1. CONSORT: One Map of Home:
2. OhioLINK: One paper library resource related to Home:
- OhioLINK provides access to nearly
50 million library items in Ohio libraries. The
OhioLINK Library Catalog contains over 13 million unique titles from its 91 member libraries.
Students and faculty request materials online, then pick them up two to three days later
at the participating library of their choice. Users can renew books online and keep them
for up to 21 weeks (students, staff) or 42 weeks (faculty).
Click on OhioLINK Library Catalog to search academic
libraries in the entire state of Ohio. You will find fewer digital sources here, but can
request non-digital materials from other libraries. Find some interesting book related
to your home and request it. If a particular book does not circulate or is not
available, find another. This item need not contain maps. You can't do this right before the exercise is due; it will
take a few days to a week for your requested book to show up at Beeghly. Document the full citation for
this source and include in your response to this exercise.
3. OWU Databases: Two Maps of Home:
4. Summon: One Map of Home:
- Summon is a library search
tool that lets you search across the majority of the library's resources including books
in CONSORT, full-text articles from OWU databases, media, ebooks, and lots more from a
single search box.
From the main OWU Library page use Summon
to search for maps of your home. Since information sources included above (CONSORT, OhioLINK,
and OWU Databases) are linked to Summon, please make sure the map you find for this section
is not one you already found. Include a screen shot of one map and the full citation
for one source found on Summon.
Exercise 2: Sum:
- Please format your exercise so that it reflects the different sections
above. Include headers (eg., "3. Finding Maps of your Home using Online Library Resources") before
each set of maps and answers. Embed scans and digital images in appropriate locations
(not all at the end or in separate files). Review the Digital Submissions Guide
if you have any questions, or contact your instructor. Turn in about 6 pages + images total.
E-mail: jbkrygier@owu.edu
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