Brooks Library Research Guides: Geography

Nationalatlas.gov provides online and printable maps covering all aspects of the United States. There are maps for topics in biology, agriculture, boundaries, climate, the environment, geology, government, history, demographics, transportation, and water, as well as land maps. You can even try making your own map!  Includes statistical information on crime, economics, energy, and health. Aerial photographs are also available, as well as raw data from map layers--see the "Mapping Professionals" tab. Nearly all of the map layers in the National Atlas Map Maker are also available for download using File Transfer Protocol (ftp). There is no charge for this service. Most of the map layers were compiled at a scale of 1:2,000,000 or a ground resolution of one kilometer. Most map layers cover the full geographic extent of the United States of America, although some cover the conterminous United States.

This title now includes over 775 maps, with locator, physical and political maps for each country, over 120 island maps, state maps for North America, Canada, and Mexico, and more than 100 city maps.  It is part of a suite of reference materials available through the subscription database Oxford Reference Online.  The database is available in full from the CWU library's homepage under "Research" -- "Databases by Title".

For digital collections of original maps, see also the research guide section "Images Online & in Databases".

This gazetteer is used to identify places to view with the Tiger Map Server and obtain census data from the 1990 Census Lookup server. You can search for places, counties or MCDs by entering the name and state abbreviation (optional), or 5-digit zip code. Note: ZIP code boundaries do not necessarily match place boundries.

The three volumes of the Columbia Gazetteer of the World are an alphabetically arranged encyclopedia of places and geographical features.

The Gazetteer includes entries for agriculture, airports, ports, trade, and transportation lines, cultural and mythic places, dams and nuclear plants, demography, distance to relevant places, historical and archeological points of interest, industries, latitude, longitude, and elevations, military bases, monuments and national parks, official local government place names, pronunciations and changed or variant names and spellings, political boundaries, political subdivisions and physical features, physical geography, resorts, theme parks, shopping malls, and service activities.

Additional specialized and historically interesting Gazetteers can be found here and here.
 

Online dictionary available through the CWU subscription of the Oxford Reference Online database.  The dictionary contains terms used in both human and physical geography and particularly cartography, surveying, remote sensing, statistics, meteorology, climatology, biogeography, ecology, simple geology, soils, geomorphology, population, migration, settlement, agriculture, industry, transport, development, and diffusion.

Contains country profiles for all nation-states and dependencies of the world describing the geography, society, and economy of each. Includes color maps and illustrations, bibliographical references and an index.  Use the Browse By Subject link to do a subject search on a specific country, for example, Afghanistan--Geography will bring up citations of articles regarding some geographic aspect involving an area of Afghanistan.

A dictionary thorough in scope and intended for a general audience. A list of scientific fields it covers is provided in the front of the book, and included in these are aerospace engineering, biochemistry, building construction and civil engineering, communications, computer science, electronics, mapping, navigation, and ordnance.

Unique multidisciplinary database supplying bibliographic information and abstracts for development studies, the Earth sciences, ecology, geomechanics, human geography, and oceanography. The database provides current coverage of over 1,800 journals and archive coverage of several thousand additional titles. Appropriate for a variety of CWU academic programs.

Contains complete bibliographic citations to articles, book reviews, documents, original literary works, and other materials appearing in more than 400 key social science and humanities journals published throughout the world about Central and South America, Mexico, the Caribbean basin, the United States-Mexico border region, and Hispanics in the United States since 1970. HAPI citations are in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, and other languages.

The SPIN database (Searchable Physics Information Notices) provides the most current indexing and abstracting of major American and Russian physics and astronomy journals. SPIN contains the abstracts of over 80 scientific journals published by the American Institute of Physics and its Member Societies since 1975, as well as selected articles from other scientific journals, totaling close to 1 million articles. Scitation covers science and technology (particularly engineering) journals online portal sites, magazines, and conference proceedings. Select the "Scitation & SPIN" radio button prior to entering your search terms. 

This is a citation / abstract database only.  To search for the full text, you will need to type in the journal or book title into the Summit Catalog (see library homepage) to see if the item is at Central or to request the item Interlibrary Loan.

Our subscription to JSTOR (short for 'Journal Storage') contains every issue of over 600 core scholarly journals in the arts, humanities, the social sciences, as well as the natural and applied sciences.  These journals have been digitized back to the first issue published (in some cases that is the 1600s).  JSTOR also contains citations (bibliographic records) for more than 1,500 leading academic journals, as well as select monographs and other materials valuable for academic work.  (This is why "Include only content I can access" should not be checked, even if you are in a hurry.  Articles not available in JSTOR are often available in our other databases or through Interlibrary Loan.)

As always please consult the Reference Desk or the nearest librarian if you have any questions about finding articles in JSTOR or elsewhere.

From the Web Site: "Our spatial datasets are available in ArcInfo export format (zipped E00) or shapefiles, metadata files are in FGDC format, and our view files are in GIF format. All of our coverages/shapefiles are in Washington State Plane, South Zone, NAD 83 HARN, units feet, unless otherwise noted."

USGS spatial data related to water resources.

From the Washington Department of Transportation, presents county, WSDOT region, and statewide datasets, from traffic logs to shoreline and precipitation distributions.

The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), developed by the USGS in cooperation with the U.S. Board on Geographic Names (BGN), contains information for almost 2 million physical and cultural geographic features in the United States and its territories. The Federally recognized name of each feature described in the data base is identified, and references are made to a feature's location by State, county, and geographic coordinates. The GNIS is our Nation's official repository of domestic geographic names information.

NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) provides scientific stewardship, products, and services for geophysical data from the Sun to the Earth and Earth's sea floor and solid earth environment, including Earth observations from space.  Browse through the rest of the website for information on space weather and the sun, geomagnetic data and models, bathymetry or ocean depths, topography, and natural hazards like hurricanes and tsunamis.

"The IMC contains information about and maps of national parks. The IMC delivers base maps and park brochure maps for geographic reference and navigation to and within parks."

The National Wetlands Inventory (NWI) of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service produces information on the characteristics, extent, and status of the Nation's wetlands and deepwater habitats. Congressional mandates in the Emergency Wetlands Resources Act requires the Service to map wetlands, and to digitize, archive and distribute the maps. With funding from other Federal, State, Tribal, local and private organizations, the Service has produced final maps for much of the nation. About half are digitized and available to the public on the Internet. Private companies provide NWI data in various other media. Hard-copy maps are available through Cooperator-run Distribution Centers.

From the Washington Department of Ecology, The collection of over 10,000 photographs provides a valuable educational monitoring tool for coastal managers and the public.

The TIGER/Line files are a digital database of geographic features, such as roads, railroads, rivers, lakes, political boundaries, census statistical boundaries, etc. covering the entire United States.

Your portal to U.S. Government scientific and technical information and data "searches over 55 databases and over 2100 selected websites from 13 federal agencies." Now also available as Science.gov Mobile!

A lengthy glossary of cartographic terms for use by cartographers, geologists, geographers or hydrologists.

Introduction to topographic maps, including how to read them, and a description of topographic map symbols.

Washington Place Names was written by Gary Fuller Reese, while Managing Librarian for the Tacoma Public Library's Northwest Room and Special Collections. The site provides a search engine for looking up the origin of city and town names in Washington State.  Try out your own town!

The David Rumsey Historical Map Collection has over 11,000 maps online. The collection focuses on rare 18th and 19th century North and South America maps and other cartographic materials. Historic maps of the World, Europe, Asia and Africa are also represented. Collection categories include antique atlas, globe, school geography, maritime chart, state, county, city, pocket, wall, childrens and manuscript maps. The collection can be used to study history, genealogy and family history.

The Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress holds more than 4.5 million items, of which Map Collections represents only a small fraction, those that have been converted to digital form. The focus of Map Collections is Americana and Cartographic Treasures of the Library of Congress. These images were created from maps and atlases and, in general, are restricted to items that are not covered by copyright protection. Map Collections is organized according to seven major categories. Because a map will be assigned to only one category, unless it is part of more than one core collection, searching Map Collections at this level will provide the most complete results since the indexes for all categories are searched simultaneously.

From the University of Texas, Austin, one of the best collections of online maps and mapping materials of general interest ordered geographically. The collection includes historical maps, maps showing economic activity, land utilization, population, and industry operations regarding places across the globe.

From the earliest European explorers to the time of modern engineers and hydrologists, the vast reserves of water within the Western United States have been the cause of both great excitement and concern. This compelling digital library brings together a wide range of documents (including legal transcripts, water project records, and personal papers) that document the Columbia, Colorado, Platte, and Rio Grande river basins. The project was completed with support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and twelve university libraries in eight western states. On the homepage, visitors can perform advanced searches, or elect to browse by the institution holding the original. Browsing is a good option; visitors can look over troves that include "Native American Water Rights in Arizona", "The Platte River Basin in Nebraska", and "Las Vegas: Water in the West". The tabs to limit format do not appear to be functional on the home page, but limits are available in the upper right corner of the results page. Text, images, audio, and EAD (finding aids for archives collections) are the available format limits. Advanced search is also available.

"Early Washington Maps: A Digital Collection is the product of a partnership between the University of Washington Libraries Map Collections and Washington State University's Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections. The maps of this collection have been drawn solely from the collections of these two institutions and are widely varied, ranging from large-scale geographical maps to small hand-drawn sketches of settlements. In the time period spanned by this project, the Pacific Northwest went from being considered 'parts as yet unknown' to being the subject of literally thousands of maps concerned with geography, transportation, climate, population, cultures, politics, tourism, and other topics."

Nature Network is the online meeting place for you and fellow scientists to gather, talk and find out about the latest scientific news and events. Science is an international endeavor and deserves a global stage for discussion. Scientists can also benefit from interactions at the local level. That's why you'll see an increasing number of local city hubs on Nature Network, starting with Boston and London.

One of the University of Virginia Library's Electronic Centers, the Geostat Center contains most of the spatial and social science data available through the University Library system. Much of the information is digital, but theyalso house the physical map collection, paper copies of many codebooks, software manuals, and reference books pertaining to spatial and statistical analysis.

NationMaster is the world's largest online database for comparing countries in the world, with all of the same features in StateMaster, as well as an educational area with free lesson plans and the unique GeoLabs, which give students all over the world an opportunity to navigate through the database and send results to their teacher via e-mail. 

From the U.S. Census Bureau,get quick, easy access to facts about people, business, and geography.

StateMaster is a free resource which allows users to compare US States with over 3,000 different statistics. The site has graphing, plotting, mapping and correlation tools, as well as thousands of maps and flags and detailed state profiles.

The Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI) makes Canada's geographic data, applications and services readily accessible on-line for decision making and business planning.  "The GeoConnections Discovery Portal is your gateway to millions of geospatial data products. Browse metadata records or search by subject, coverage or product type to find, evaluate, visualize and access the geospatial data you need."

The Country Studies Series presented by the Library of Congress, is a descriptve analysis of the historical setting and the social, economic, political, and national security systems and institutions of countries throughout the world.  For a similar website, see the U.S. State Department's website called "Background Notes" at http://www.state.gov/ 

From the World Resources Insitute, comprehensive online database that focuses on the environmental, social, and economic trends that shape our world.

A series of guides for over 270 countries and territories. These include features, demographics, geography data, interactive world maps, satellite photos, scrollable city images, and links to resources about each country within the Intute database. You can even compare data between countries. You may go straight to the entry for a specific country via the dropdown menu, or you can search for satellite images and features by keyword.

Interesting and sometimes educational websites are featured on this annotated, topical gateway of websites.  Each website is recommended and annotated by a librarian working for the Librarians Internet Index as a quality resource.  You can also quickly group resources by domain type, so it is easy to see which sites are commercial, from organizations, and from the government.

Gateway to websites discussing and providing online maps displaying the history of cartography, specifically early map making.  The website includes links to websites that provide citations of books and articles on specific maps and cartographers as well.

Covers environmental research topics in terms of agriculture, business practices and solutions, climate, energy, ecosystems, and resources. There are also pages highlighting environmental trends, and another area provides citation and abstract information for WRI's publications, with most available in full text. These publications include articles, powerpoints and datasets of reliable and current data on a number of environmental studies done under the World Resources Report Series.

This database provides access to funding opportunities as well as scholar profiles, with the ability to add your own scholar profile and to view the profiles of various research organizations.  PIVOT allows you to also prioritize and save your searches to receive weekly alerts.

You must register your own account and log in thereafter in order to use PIVOT.   Registration and log in is in the upper righthand corner of screen.

Previous CWU users of COS Funding Opportunities may log in with their existing username and password, as the accounts have been transferred over into PIVOT. 

NOTE:  For some opportunities, sponsors accept only a limited number of proposals or applications from an institution, or require an institution to rank or prioritize applications before submission. Please contact the Office of Graduate Studies and Research before applying if an opportunity is marked "Internal Coordination Required".

Pivot Video Tutorials

The online companion to this 2006-2007 library exhibit "explores surveying, cartography, geodesy, and geographic information systems." Includes annotated images from the exhibit; for example, the online surveying section "features maps illustrating the historical evolution in surveying with maps of George Washington's farm executed between 1760 and 1999." Also includes images of all objects, and a video clip. From the Library of Congress.

Interactive site includes maps, biographies, photographs of trails, childrens' educational activities, and more.

"Queries range from the profound (Is it possible to travel through time?) to the everyday (How does a.microwave oven cook food?) and from the interesting (What illnesses do insects get?) to the surprising (How do whales sleep without drowning?"