COLLECTIONS: Maps

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View the top-level web page "Our Digitized Map Collections" for our digitized Long Island map and NYS map collections.

 The libraries have a substantial collection of maps and other cartographic information in digital form. Other materials can be viewed and printed at select workstations at the Science/Engineering in the North Reading Room of the Melville Library.  Printing of oversized maps is possible for a fee on a weekdays from 9am-5pm.

The types of digital maps available include outline maps, road maps, geological maps, topographic maps, historical maps,  demographic maps and a digital bathymetric chart. Coverage is worldwide, with particular emphasis on Long Island and New York State.

Many of these maps can be made with "user friendly" electronic atlases, such as ESRI Data and Maps, which can print detailed street maps of any place in the United States. Some of the maps may be overlaid on Google Earth.
More specialized or complicated maps require the use of ArcGIS or IMAGINE.  ArcGIS is our Geographic Information System (GIS) software package, while IMAGINE is our remote sensing imagery analysis package.  Both ArcGIS and IMAGINE ArcGIS require some training to use, and new users should make an appointment for instruction before attempting to work with it.

ArcGIS has many capabilities, including the ability to integrate statistical data with maps, and to display different "layers" of geographic information on a map. These layers might be polygons, representing areas such as counties, census tracts, or municipal boundaries; lines, such as streets, rivers, or railroads; or points, such as hazardous waste disposal sites. A particularly powerful application of ArcGIS is the creation of detailed demographic maps using data from the federal census.