GIS – Reference at Newman Library

GIS Workshop Registration for Fall 2018 is now Open

Registration is now open for the fall semester’s GIS (geographic information systems) Practicum, Introduction to GIS Using Open Source Software (featuring QGIS). There will be two sessions this term, held in the GIS Lab at Baruch College:

Friday October 26th
Friday November 16th

The day-long workshop runs from 9am to 4:30pm. Current CUNY graduate students, faculty, and staff, and full-time Baruch undergrads are eligible to register. Advance registration is required; the fee is $30 and includes a detailed tutorial manual and a light breakfast. Participants must bring their own laptop with QGIS 2.18 pre-installed in order to take the class. Visit the GIS Practicum page to learn more and to register:

http://guides.newman.baruch.cuny.edu/gis/gisprac

Baruch librarians: feel free to circulate this info to students and faculty, but please do not post on listservs.

GIS Workshop Registration for Spring 2017 Is Now Open

Registration is now open for the spring semester’s GIS (geographic information systems) Practicum, Introduction to GIS Using Open Source Software (featuring QGIS). There will only be one session this term, held in the GIS Lab at Baruch College:

Friday Mar 10th

The day-long workshop runs from 9am to 4:30pm. Current CUNY graduate students, faculty, and staff, and full-time Baruch undergrads are eligible to register. Advance registration is required; the fee is $30 and includes a detailed tutorial manual and a light breakfast. Participants must bring their own laptop with QGIS pre-installed in order to take the class. Visit the GIS Practicum page to learn more and to register: http://guides.newman.baruch.cuny.edu/gis/gisprac.

Baruch librarians: feel free to circulate this info to students and faculty, but please do not post on listservs.

GIS Workshop Registration for Spring 2016 Is Now Open

Registration is now open for the spring semester’s GIS (geographic information systems) Practicum, Introduction to GIS Using Open Source Software (featuring QGIS). The March workshop will be held at the Department of Earth, Environmental, and Geospatial Sciences at Lehman College in the Bronx (20 seats, PCs provided). The April session will be held at Baruch in the GIS Lab (10 seats, participants must bring laptops).

Friday Mar 4th
Friday Apr 1st

The day-long workshop runs from 9am to 4:30pm. Current CUNY graduate students, faculty, and staff, and full-time Baruch and Lehman undergrads are eligible to register. Advance registration is required; the fee is $30 and includes a detailed tutorial manual and a light breakfast. Visit the GIS Practicum page to learn more and to register: http://guides.newman.baruch.cuny.edu/gis/gisprac.

This semester we’re also bringing back the Spatial Databases workshop (featuring Spatialite). The half-day workshop will run from 9am to 12:30pm on Friday April 8th at Lehman College. Eligibility requirements are the same, except that participants must also have prior GIS experience as this is a more advanced workshop. The registration fee is $5. Visit the Spatial Database Practicum page to learn more and to register: http://guides.newman.baruch.cuny.edu/gis/spatialdb.

GIS Workshop Registration for Fall 2015 Is Now Open

Registration is now open for the fall semester’s GIS (geographic information systems) Practicum, Introduction to GIS Using Open Source Software (featuring QGIS). The locations of the sessions will differ from previous years. The October sessions will be held at Baruch in the GIS Lab; they’ll be smaller (10 seats) and participants will need to bring a laptop. The November session will be held at the Department of Earth, Environmental, and Geospatial Sciences at Lehman College in the Bronx. This will be a larger session (20 seats) and PCs will be provided.

Oct 2nd
Oct 23rd
Nov 13th

Feel free to circulate this info to students and faculty, but please do not post via listservs. I have fliers in my office if anyone would like some to distribute.

I had people sign up throughout the summer for early notification, so they would receive an email as soon as registration opened. A lot of people signed up. If there is excess demand (more people than seats), I may try to squeeze an additional session in somewhere.

New Baruch Geoportal Just Launched

We’ve relaunched the Baruch Geoportal, our library’s on-line repository for GIS and geospatial data. Our new front-end uses a Confluence wiki which allows us to: update the site more quickly, spend more time on content and less time on design, and to collaborate more easily. Also, it’s visually integrated with the library’s and the college’s website. Much of the existing content was migrated over, and we’ve added some new material. You can read our inaugural blog post for more details, and then follow along with that blog to monitor updates on the site. The new url is:

https://www.baruch.cuny.edu/confluence/display/geoportal/

The library’s databases list has been updated to reflect this change. If people still have bookmarks to the old address (http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/geoportal/), they’ll automatically be re-directed to the new site (at least for the next few months).

NYC Mass Transit Spatial Layers for GIS

The GIS Lab has just launched a new dataset called the NYC Mass Transit Spatial Layers series. These GIS files contain the stops and routes for NYC buses, subways, and trains (the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North). The files are released under Creative Commons and are available on the Baruch Geoportal at: http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/geoportal/data/nyc_transit/.

We intend to update the data bi-annually. The layers are provided in a shapefile format that can be used with just about any GIS software, and are projected in the local state plane coordinate system commonly used by City agencies. In the future we plan to add an FAQ to provide new users with tips on how to work with the files.

The series was created so that members of the public would have access to well-documented and readily-usable GIS layers of NYC mass transit features. The MTA publishes a data feed for developers that contains data for stops, trips, and routes, but in a format that’s not readily useable in GIS (for example, routes have to be constructed from long strings of coordinates) or readily useable for making basic map representations of routes or stops (the data is in a General Transit Feed Specification format that’s suitable for constructing schedules and timetables). We have essentially taken this raw data, built a process for transforming and cleaning it, and have documented it using spatial metadata standards.

The process was a team effort that CA’s Rachel Weinberg, Josiah Wahlrab, Araby Smyth and I all contributed to. The CUNY Mapping Service at the Center for Urban Research also deserves recognition – they inspired this project through the detailed documentation they provided on their experiences working with this data feed.

GIS Practicum Spring 2015

After a hiatus in the fall, the workshops are back! This semester’s GIS (geographic information systems) Practicum, Introduction to GIS Using Open Source Software (featuring QGIS), will take place on the following Fridays:

February 27th
March 27th
April 24th

The day-long workshop runs from 9am to 4:30pm. Current CUNY graduate students, faculty, and staff, and full-time Baruch undergrads are eligible to register. Advance registration is required; the fee is $30 and includes a detailed tutorial manual and a light breakfast. Visit the GIS Practicum page to learn more and to register: http://guides.newman.baruch.cuny.edu/gis/gisprac.

Registration for both sessions begins on January 30th. Feel free to circulate this info to students and faculty, but please do not post via listservs. I have fliers in my office if anyone would like some to distribute.

GIS Practicum to Return in Spring 2015

The GIS Practicum, Introduction to GIS Using Open Source Software (QGIS), will return in spring 2015. This fall I’ll be revising the tutorial with new content based on feedback from past participants, and will update the exercises based on the new 2.0 interface that QGIS introduced this past year. This will be the first major rewrite of the content since the workshop was introduced three years ago.

Prospective participants can fill out a short form on the GIS Practicum page if they would like to be notified when registration for the workshops opens at the end of January. In all likelihood there will be one day-long session each month on a Friday in March, April, and May. Current CUNY graduate students, faculty, and staff, and Baruch undergraduates are eligible to sign-up.

GIS Practicum Spring 2014

This semester’s GIS (geographic information systems) Practicum, Introduction to GIS Using Open Source Software (using QGIS), will take place on the following Fridays:

Februrary 28th
April 4th
May 2nd

The day-long workshop runs from 9am to 4:30pm. Current CUNY graduate students, faculty, and staff are eligible to register; Baruch undergrads may register with permission from the instructor. Advance registration is required; the fee is $30 and includes a detailed tutorial manual and a light breakfast. Visit the GIS Practicum page to learn more and to register: http://guides.newman.baruch.cuny.edu/gis/gisprac

A second, advanced workshop, Introduction to Spatial Databases Using Open Source Software (using QGIS and Spatialite), will be offered once this semester. The half-day workshop will run from 9am to 12:30pm on Friday April 11th.

Eligibility requirements are the same, except that participants must also have prior GIS experience. Advance registration is required; the fee is $10 and includes a tutorial booklet and hot beverages. Visit the Spatial Database Practicum page to learn more and to register: http://guides.newman.baruch.cuny.edu/gis/spatialdb

Registration for both sessions is now open. Feel free to circulate this info to Baruch students, faculty, and staff, but please do not post via listservs. I have fliers in my office if anyone would like some to distribute.

MapPluto Tax Lot / Parcel GIS Data

Over the summer the NYC Dept of Planning changed course and started providing their MapPluto product – a GIS dataset with boundaries of every tax parcel and detailed attributes like zoning, land use, land value, building descriptors, and administrative identifiers – for free. Previously the dataset cost $300 for each borough and had very tight restrictions on use. Now anyone can download the latest version from their website.

We had purchased a copy of the 2008 MapPluto data for all five boroughs, and I handled the few requests I had via email. But now that the restrictions are off I’m providing free access to it on the Baruch Geoportal. The data is in shapefile format and can be used in any GIS system (ArcGIS, QGIS, etc.). There is one file for each borough. At this point it’s useful for historic purposes; users who want the latest data should go directly to the City’s website.