Maps & Geographic Information System (GIS)

Maps and GIS are very specialized resources. Maps come in many forms such as base maps, land use, topographic, aerial photos, atlases and books, travel information and digital geospatial data. They can be used for any subject to visualize current or historic information. Geographic and spatial information can be available on paper, as aerial photographs, or digitally (e.g., Google Maps, Google Earth, GIS).

Maps are particularly useful for topics related to Geography, Urban Studies, Environmental Studies, Sociology, Political Science, and History. The use of geographic information is useful when you want to visually represent spatial data and see historical and landscape changes over time (e.g., mapping crime statistics using GIS to examine racial profiling in a specific city, or using aerial photos for environmental assessment by looking at deforestation patterns over time).

Most maps should have at least three things to be considered credible sources: title, scale and legend. The accuracy of a map is not solely based on the cartographer, but currency as well. For example, a political map from 1945 would have very different information than a current map in terms of political boundaries (e.g., Yugoslavia, USSR, Zaire, and Rhodesia are countries that were all once represented on maps, but are not currently). Political biases need to be considered when evaluating maps or political boundaries (e.g., Palestine/Israel/West Bank are contested boundaries represented differently on maps depending on the publisher).