Earlier this month, the USGS launched “TopoView 2.1”, an enhancement to the current popular TopoView mapping service that lets users discover, interact, and download historical USGS topographic maps scans.
TopoView 2.1 is a modern web application built on an open source mapping platform that is free of charge. The highly interactive service provides tools and procedures that allow users to easily find historic map scans from USGS’s Historical Topographic Map Collection and even compare those with modern day maps.
Comparing modern-day Philadelphia to the historical map of the area in 1891. TopoView lets users easily visualize changes to areas that were mapped by the USGS throughout history. (via USGS)
Upgraded features include:
new user interface that’s faster and easier to use,
access and download maps from a variety of search terms
intuitive tools to compare historical maps with maps of the present.
ability to preview maps within the interface
filters and searches that work seamlessly with the map records table to get you the info you want with just a few clicks.
To further assist users with these features, the TopoView team has released a “how to” video to walk through the download and comparison process.
TopoView highlights one of the USGS’s most important and useful products, the topographic map. In 1879, the USGS began to map the Nation’s topography.
The most current maps are available from The National Map and US Topo quadrangles. TopoView shows the many and varied older maps of each area, and so is useful for historical purposes—for example, the names of some natural and cultural features have changed over time, and the ‘old’ names can be found on these historical topographic maps.
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com. Gary is also the co-founder of infoDJ an innovation research consultancy supporting corporate product and business model teams with just-in-time fact and insight finding.
The article linked below (full-text) was recently published Reference Services Review. Title Libraries Advancing Health Equity: A Literature Review Authors Amanda J. Wilson National Library of Medicine Catherine Staley National ...
From the Chicago Sun-Times Editorial Board: Anyone who has spent time on a bookmobile has learned enough to know nothing withstands the change of time. Still, we lament the slow ...
From The Library of Congress (via a 4 Corners of the World Blog Post by Anchi Hoh): The African and Middle Eastern Division is delighted to announce the rerelease of the ...
From the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA): The chart [monitoring report]…is an updated version of previous monitoring reports. Where a country has been updated or added since ...
AI Models Spit Out Photos of Real People and Copyrighted Image (via MIT Technology Review) Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Seeks to Hire Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion ChatGPT ...
From The NY Times: In 1931, the first library in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, opened its doors — to white patrons only. Nearly a century later, Kenyans dressed in the slinky ...
From Berkeley Law: As part of its broader commitment to considering and fostering diversity and inclusion within its storied stacks, the Berkeley Law Library staff have taken on one prominent example of ...
From the Associated Press: A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were ...
An Introduction to Trade Secrets Law in the United States Oil and Gas Technology and Geothermal Energy Development Regulating Big Tech: CRS Legal Products for the 118th Congress Rules and ...
Columbia: A Judge Just Used ChatGPT to Make a Court Decision (via VICE) Coming Soon: STM US Annual Conference 2023 to Take Place in DC (April 26-27) FCC Announces Over ...
The article linked below was published today (February 3, 2023). Title Sustainability 3.0 in Libraries: A Challenge for Management Author Alice Keller University Library Basel, University of Basel, Switzerland Source ...
From a National Academies Announcement: The Nobel Prize Summit Truth, Trust and Hope will bring together Nobel Prize laureates and other world-renowned experts and leaders for a global dialogue on how to stop ...