Research Guides: GEOG 2750: Geography & General History/Culture Sources

Online Maps

Google Earth This link opens in a new window
Google Earth puts a planet's worth of imagery and other geographic information right on your desktop. View exotic locales like Maui and Paris as well as points of interest such as local restaurants, hospitals, schools, and more.

Old Maps Online
Search over 400,000 older digitized maps from around the world.

Digitized Maps from UT Austin:

Maps of The World
Maps of Africa
Maps of The Americas including United States, Canada and Mexico
Maps of Asia
Maps of Australia and the Pacific
Maps of Europe
Maps of The Middle East
Maps of Polar Regions and Oceans
Maps of Russia and the Former Soviet Republics
Maps of The United States including National Parks and Monuments

See also their extensive list of other map sites.

EarthExplorer This link opens in a new window
This tool, geared to earth sciences data, provides online search, browse display, and data download.
National Geographic Virtual Library This link opens in a new window
The National Geographic Virtual Library brings together the complete archive of the National Geographic magazine — every page of every issue — from 1888 to1994 along with a cross-searchable collection of National Geographic books, maps, images and videos.
Empire Online This link opens in a new window
Empire Online is a digital resource spanning five centuries. Its contents chart the rise and fall of empires around the worl

Google Training & Tutorials

Learn Google Earth

Learn Google Earth provides a number of tutorials for both beginners and more advanced users, allowing for further exploration of some of the main functionality of Google Earth.

Google Earth Outreach

Google Earth Outreach provides additional tutorials on a number of topics including annotating Google Earth, importing GIS data, using Spreadsheet Mapper, using Tour Builder, and more.

Google My Maps

Google My Maps lets you quickly and easily make and share custom maps. This tutorial will help you get started using Google My Maps and covers topics including importing data, styling your map, and more.

Find Video

OSU Library Catalog Keyword Search limited to online videos

Films on Demand
Search your topic and find results from 1000s of quality videos. You can build and share playlists, define specific segments for viewing, and more.
Kanopy Streaming Service
Search your topic and find results from 1000s of quality videos. You can build and share playlists, define specific segments for viewing, and more.

Consider these general sources...

Africa South of the Sahara, Third Edition

Royal Geographic Society Image Search
Find/Browse images from around the world on a wide range of topics.
Mapping Worlds Projects
See themed world maps based on a variety of criteria.
World Atlas
Find maps, cultural, and travel information about countries/regions of the world.
National Geographic's YouTube Channel
Over 80,000 videos available on YouTube from National Geographic.
LizardPoint
This site has multiple quizzes to help test your knowledge about the countries (and their regions, capitals, flags, leaders, etc.), regions, bodies of water, etc.
Map History
Tony Campbell's Website on the history of cartography.
Population Geography

Web-Based GIS/Mapping Tools

ArcGIS Online is an online, collaborative web GIS that allows you to use, create, and share maps, scenes, apps, layers, analytics, and data. Users get access to ready-to-use maps, ready-to-use apps, and Esri's cloud storage, where you can add items and publish web layers.

ArcGIS Online organizational accounts are available to all OSU faculty, staff, and students. To sign up for an account with your OSU name.#, follow the instructions provided here by CURA: Sign up for ArcGIS Online.

Once you've created your ArcGIS Online organizational account, you'll also be able to sign up to gain access to many other resources available through the Esri Training Catalog. To gain access to these valuable online tutorials, exercises, and other training materials, following the instructions provided here: Training and Resources.

Google Earth

Google Earth lets you fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery, terrain, 3D buildings, and much more. You can explore rich geographic content, save your toured places, and share with others in this free desktop and mobile application. Google Earth Pro provides additional capabilities such as Movie Maker and GIS data import capability and is also available for free download.

Learn more about the features included in each of these two products and download your copy today.

Google My Maps

Google My Maps allows you to create stylish custom maps to share and publish online. You can add lines, shapes, or places on the map, or import data from Google Drive spreadsheets, as well as Excel, CSV, and KML files.

More information about Google Earth and Google My Maps tutorials can be found here.

Scribble Maps basic service is free and allows users to create custom maps, widgets, and images. Custom maps can be saved, shared with friends, or published to a website or blog.

Features of Scribble Maps include:

Adding custom images/overlays
Adding place text and place markers
Drawing shapes
Calculating area and distance
Creating PDF, KML, GPX, SHP, and DXF files
Sharing maps with friends
Embedding map widgets on websites

ZeeMaps is an online mapping service that allows you to easily create, publish, and share interactive maps. You can construct dynamic visualizations of geographic information, producing maps from lists of people or places. All maps are stored on the ZeeMaps servers, and can be instantly accessed any time, anywhere, from any standard web browser on a computer or mobile device.

ZeeMaps allows for three-level access control for each map - Viewer, Member, and Admin - a feature that facilitates collaborative, team-based mapping.

ZeeMaps also enables you to get location information from other users, e.g., members of an online discussion forum, students from a class, or researchers from around the world, to create crowd-sourced online maps.

You can learn more about ZeeMaps and create a free basic account here.

Find Articles

Scopus This link opens in a new window
Scopus is a major database covering most disciplines. It contains most of GEOBASE (see below). It is also used for citation searching - so you can examine who has cited an article since its publication.
GeoRef This link opens in a new window
GeoRef is the major tool for Earth Sciences. Use this tool if your topic touches on geologic features of the Earth.
Environment Complete This link opens in a new window
Use this database to find items related to environmental issues, such as climate change.
Historical Abstracts This link opens in a new window
History literature for the world, except U.S. and Canada.
America: History and Life This link opens in a new window
History literature for U.S. and Canada.
SocINDEX with Full Text [Selected Articles in Full Text] This link opens in a new window
SocINDEX is used for searching the literature of multiple social science disciplines.
Web of Science Core Collection This link opens in a new window
This database covers most disciplines. Included is the ability to do citation searching (seeing who has cited an article since publication) back to 1900 for the sciences and social sciences.
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window

World GIS Data

DIVA-GIS DIVA-GIS provides free geospatial data including administrative boundaries at both the country and global level. Other available datasets include global climate data, species occurrence data, and crop (genebank) collection data.
FAO GeoNetwork The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations maintains the GeoNetwork, which provides access to interactive maps, satellite imagery, and GIS data in categories such as: Agriculture and Livestock, Climate, Fisheries and Aquaculture, Soils and Soil Resources, and more.
GADM maps and data GADM is a spatial database of the location of the world's administrative areas (or adminstrative boundaries) for use in GIS and similar software. Administrative areas in this database are countries and lower level subdivisions such as provinces, departments, bibhag, bundeslander, daerah istimewa, fivondronana, krong, landsvæðun, opština, sous-préfectures, counties, and thana.
Natural Earth Natural Earth is a public domain dataset featuring vector and raster data available at 1:10 million, 1:50 million, and 1:110 million scales.
Open Geoportal The Open Geoportal (OGP) is a collaboratively developed, open source, federated web application to rapidly discover, preview, and retrieve geospatial data from multiple organizations. The project is lead by Tufts University along with Harvard and MIT.
OpenStreetMap Data Extracts (Geofabrik) The Geofabrik server has data extracts from OpenStreetMap, which are normally updated every day, and provides worldwide coverage by sub-region. OpenStreetMap is a work in progress that is built by a community of mappers who contribute and maintain data based on their local knowledge.
OpenStreetMap Metro Extracts (Mapzen) Mapzen provides metro-area shapefiles for cities all over the world based on OpenStreetMap data. The Metro Extracts are automatically updated each week. OpenStreetMap is a work in progress that is built by a community of mappers who contribute and maintain data based on their local knowledge.
Planet OSM The files found on Planet OSM are regularly-updated, complete copies of the OpenStreetMap.org database. OpenStreetMap is a work in progress that is built by a community of mappers who contribute and maintain data based on their local knowledge.
United Nations Environment Programme The Environmental Data Explorer is the authoritative source for datasets used by UNEP and its partners in the Global Environment Outlook (GEO) report and other integrated environment assessments. Its online database holds more than 500 different variables, as national, subregional, regional and global statistics or as geospatial datasets. Use the advanced search function to target geospatial datasets.
USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) EROS offers a large collection of downloadable Earth imagery data, including: aerial photography, digitized maps, elevation products, fire science, land cover, and satellite imagery.
WorldClim WorldClim is a set of global climate layers (climate grids) with a spatial resolution of about 1 square kilometer. The data can be used for mapping and spatial modeling in a GIS or with other computer programs.