GIS @ W&L

The Virginia Outdoors Foundation is currently looking for a GIS intern in its Staunton Regional Office. Necessary skills include experience with ArcView. GPS experience a plus. Internship will include working with a staff member to organize and collate GIS data. Internship is a temporary part-time paid position. Day and work hours are VERY FLEXIBLE and will be between 10-30 hours per week. Intern may start as early as May. Please submit a cover letter and resume including your GIS classes, GIS experience and references to VDrumheller@vofonline.org

If you have any questions, you may contact Tracy Campbell at t.campbell226@gmail.com. She just graduated from JMU and has interned with VOF since 2006. She can provide you with any information you would like.

The 19th Annual Virginia GIS Conference is now open for registration and paper submissions. This year, it will be held in Roanoke, so lodging and travel will be less of an issue. For more information, go to www.virginiagis.org.

This is a little bit old, but a friend of mine recently sent me a link to a "generic names for soft drinks" map. What do you call your favorite carbonated beverage? Are you the norm in your county? Of course, some population data would make this map even more interesting.

This is just another interesting way to use data in a GIS to create a very striking presentation. (Click the image to view full size.)

When we think of GIS, we think of geography in terms of Earth's surfaces. Whether we are looking at a world map or a map of the county, there is still a basic and common geography that we all have as a baseline.

What about the human body? We could certainly learn a lot about the body's systems by plotting points of data onto a map of the body. The most difficult part is that there are an infinite number of body shapes in the world, so implementing a GIS of the body must either be quite generic or patient specific.

There are a lot of places this type of GIS could go, and some are already exploring it. At the National Library of Medicine, the Visible Human Project has been in the works for about two decades. The data set for the Visible Human Project consists of MRI, CT and anatomical images. The University of Colorado has created the Functional Atlas of the Visible Human, which includes several teaching modules.

The CAVEman Human Body Project is a newer, perhaps less accessible project at the University of Calgary. From the website:

The CAVEman Project aims to create visual maps of information about diseases that have a genetic component, such as cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer's. Using an immersive virtual reality environment called the CAVE, the research team will integrate a high-resolution digital atlas of a human body with medical data related to specific diseases. The final result will be a next-generation 4D (space and time) visual system to "see" disease processes and the effects of interventions, such as drugs, on these processes.

I'm back from the NITLE conference Managing and Supporting GIS, and there is one tool in particular that I'm excited to share. BatchGeocode is a free, web-based tool that will take a list of addresses and provide latitude and longitude coordinates that may be imported into ArcGIS, Google Earth, Google Maps, and other mapping software to easily map them.

What is geocoding? Simply, this is when either a person or a program takes an address and assigns latitude and longitude coordinates so that the address may be displayed accurately on a map. This allows you to plot multiple addresses on one map.

Can't get enough? There's even a blog so you can keep up to date with all things BatchGeocode!

There is a new listserv for GIS users at W&L, GISUG@wlu.edu. If you are interested in subscribing, please visit http://lapps1.wlu.edu/majordomo/cgi-bin/majordomo.pl and choose "gisug" from the drop-down menu.

Any member of the W&L community is welcome to join.

I know a lot of people are excited and ready to get started with GIS. I think a good next step would be for us all to get together as a User Group (training participants plus a few others) and talk about future action.

When is a good time for everyone to meet? I think shortly after Spring Break would be best, but please use the comments to post your ideas.

Thanks!

Now that we've had our training, I'd like to hear what everyone thinks now. What questions do you still have? What new questions are lurking?

Use the comments here and we can discuss what our thoughts are now that we know the software.

The minutes for the Pre-Training meeting are posted on the GIS wiki at http://library.wlu.edu/wiki/index.php/GIS/Meetings. If I reported something that is horribly wrong, please let me know or edit it. If you were unable to attend the meeting and have a question, either post a comment here or send me an email.

The 7th annual ESRI Education User Conference, or EdUC, will be June 16-19 in San Diego. EdUC is the largest GIS education event in the country, with an audience of teachers, researchers, librarians, and administrators. One of the events is an Academic GIS Program Fair, which is a great opportunity to see what other attendees are doing with GIS.

To find out more, the website is at http://www.esri.com/educ. There is also a blog at http://blogs.esri.com/roller/page/ucblog to keep up to date with speakers and events. The deadline to register is April 27, so you can wait until GIS training is complete before registering.

Also check out how you can involve your seniors in EdUC.