Monday, November 9, 2009

Welcome to the GIS/Data Center Blog

Welcome to the first of many blog posts brought to you by the staff of the GIS/Data Center in Fondren Library at Rice University. GIS stands for Geographic Information Systems and makes use of hardware and software to support people in displaying, querying, manipulating, and analyzing spatial data.

This blog will be geared towards the Rice community and will highlight resources at the GIS/Data Center and in the Houston area; however, most of the information will be equally applicable to anyone with an interest in or curiosity about GIS. We will be highlighting data, tools, techniques, and applications that we hope will be useful to those just getting started, as well as those with more experience who are looking for new and exciting innovations in the field. Therefore, our posts will feature a mixture of recent developments and well-established practices.

We've come up with some fun daily themes to keep you reading and us writing:

Miscellaneous Monday - general GIS news, Houston and Fondren Library GIS information and events, Rice faculty and student projects utilizing GIS

Tuesday Tools - tools that can be used online or downloaded to perform special functions in GIS and cartography

Web Wednesday - websites that either allow you to browse and query existing data online or to create online content using your own data

Thursday Data - sources of free, high-quality, GIS-related data

Fun Friday - interesting, novel, and downright fun maps and applications

If you would like more information or one-on-one training related to the any of the topics covered in the blog, feel free to visit us at the GIS/Data Center in the basement of Fondren Library (B40). Please also refer to our website for our contact information and more details regarding our computer lab, data, training, and assistance.

While comments will not be displayed on this blog, we do welcome your feedback and will take your comments into consideration for the future development of our blog.