Subject Guide

Geography and Map Subject Guide

This subject guide covers geographic and map resources available at the Johnston Memorial Library, including full-text journals, magazine, and newspaper articles, geographic and map websites, and printed materials in the Reference Collection. This is not a comprehensive subject guide, but rather a selective list of materials that are most useful for locating information in this field. Library location and call number are provided for print publications.

Full Text Databases	Journal Indexes and Abstracts
Encyclopedias and Dictionaries	Internet Websites

Full-Text Databases

InfoTrac OneFile. Indexes and abstracts general interest and scholarly periodicals, including a number of core titles in geography. Full-text coverage is also provided for over half of the periodicals.

Xreferplus. An online reference library that provides access to a selection of reference books, including encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri, and books of quotations. Includes several geography encyclopedias and dictionaries.

Return to the Top of Page

Journal Indexes and Abstracts

Geobase. Covers worldwide literature on geography, geology, and ecology. This database covers journals, books, monographs, conference proceedings and reports. Includes abstracts and is updated monthly. Covers from 1980 to present.

Return to the Top of Page

Encyclopedias and Dictionaries

Biographical Dictionary of Geography. by Robert P. Larkin. Greenwood Press, 1993. Work includes people who have made significant contributions to the field of geography and represent a cross section of geographers from a variety of subfields within the discipline. Location: Reference Department, 1st floor, Call Number: REF G67.L37.

Companion Encyclopedia of Geography: the Environment and Humankind. by Ian Douglas. Routledge, 1996. Forty-five self-contained chapters are bound into a unified whole by the editors' general and section introductions. Arrangement is in six parts. The first focuses on the evolution of the earth through geological, and up to historical time; the second considers the transformations caused by human occupancy, rapid population growth, and the industrial society. Subsequent sections examine the period 1939 to 1946, and the end of the 20th century. Finally, responses of the geographical discipline to the world of the post-war period are examined. Location: Reference Department, 1st floor, Call Number: Ref G116.C645.

Explorers and Discovers of the World. by Daniel B. Baker. Gale Research, 1993. This work presents biological information on more than 320 world explorers. Beginning with early Greek scholars and travelers and extending to 20th-century underwater and space exploration, Explorers and Discovers of the World also expands coverage beyond the standard well-known explorers to include the contributions of women and non-Europeans for whom information isn't readily available. Location: Reference Department, 1st floor, Call Number: Ref G200.E88.

Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary. 3rd. ed. Merriam-Webster, Inc.. 1997. This is a comprehensive desk-sized guide to the places of the world. Its objective is to provide, in text and maps, essential information on spelling, pronunciation, type of features, location, and depending on the nature of the entry, population, size, economy, history, and other matters of importance. Location: Reference Department, 1st floor, Ref G103.5.W42.

National Geographic Desk Reference. National Geographic, 1999. This work provides the basics of geography and maps, physical geography, an alphabetical listing of the world's 191 nations, 80 maps, a glossary, and an index to the first three parts. About one page is dedicated to each nation with basic information on physical location, population, religion, language, government, and economy. Location: Reference Department, 1st floor, Call Number: Ref G123.N38.

Place names of the World: Origins and Meanings of the Names for Over 5,000 Natural Features, Countries, Countries, Capitals, Territories, Cities, and Historic Sites. by Adrian Room. McFarlan, 1997. This dictionary aims to give the origins of over 5,000 of the world's most familiar place names. They range from natural objects, such as oceans, seas, rivers, lakes, mountains, islands, capes and forests. Location: Reference Department, 1st floor, Call Number: Ref G105.R66.

Return to the Top of Page

Internet Websites

ANEKI.com. Country ranking lists of such things as richest, most populous, largest, cleanest, etc. There are links to the CIA World Fact Book for more information about the countries on the lists. There is also a World Almanac for quick facts about countries.

CIA World Factbook. Covers the following topics for over 250 countries: geography, people, government, economy, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues.

Confluence Project. Allows users to enter the latitude/longitude that you want and press the 'Quick Search" button to locate the place.

Dictionary of Cartographic Terms. Glossary of cartographic terms.

Flags of the World. The definitive Internet site for flags. Around 10,000 pages and 18,000 images about flags and vexillology. Indexed by country, title, or keyword (e.g., to find which flags have stars, check the keyword index under S). Includes a directory of links to other vexillological sites and a new flags section.

Geo explorer. Geography Portal is your guide to Geography on the web. Geo Explorer aims to meet all your geographical needs. This web site is packed full of links and web resources to support students and teachers of geography or those with a general interest in geography.

Geographic Names Information System. The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), developed by the USGS in cooperation with the U.S. Board on Geographic Names (BGN), contains information about almost 2 million physical and cultural geographic features in the United States. The federally recognized name of each feature described in the data base is identified, and references are made to a feature's location by State, county, and geographic names information. The GNIS is our Nation's official repository of domestic geographic names information. Information about foreign geographic feature names can be obtained from the GEOnet Names Server, developed and maintained by the National Imagery and Mapping Agency.

Geography Discipline Network (GDN). Provides pedagogic resources for geography, earth and environmental sciences in higher education. Features include resource database, publications, journal abstracts, and conference and discussion papers.

GEOnet Names Server. Provides access to the National Imagery and Mapping Agency's (NIMA) database of foreign geographic feature names. Gives latitude and longitude. Excludes the United States and Antarctica. See USGS Geographic Names Information System for them.

GeographyIQ. This online world atlas is packed with geographic, economic, political, historical and cultural information. In addition, GeographyIQ brings together a number of other resources including maps, flags, currency conversion as well as climate and time zone information.

Geography.org. This site includes information about climate, maps, countries, country codes and much more. Designed for both teachers and students.

Geosource. This annotated directory, with more than 3,000 entries, covers human geography, physical geography, planning, geoscience, and environmental science. Maintained from the library at Utrecht University, it complements Oddens' Bookmarks, which covers cartography and maps.

Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names. Hierarchically arranged geographic data that is global in scope. Site contains around 1,000,000 place names representing approximately 900,000 physical or political entities, including continents, rivers, mountains, empires, nations, states, districts, townships, cities, and neighborhoods. It provides vernacular, English, and historical names; variant names in other languages; coordinates; as well as brief notes with additional information about the places. Will be updated on an ongoing basis. Place names often have associated display dates, which are short notes describing when the name was used (e.g., medieval, Roman).

Glossary of Geographic Terms. Brief definitions of major geography terms.

InfoNation. This United Nations site offers information about the geography, economy, population, and social indicators for member states. InfoNation is an easy-to-use, two-step database that allows you to view and compare the most up-to-date statistical data for the Member States of the United Nations.

Internet Atlas and Timezone Server. Get latitude and longitude for anywhere

Internet Resources for Geographers. This site is maintained by the geography Department at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Coverage includes: starting places, journals, map collections, geo-spatial databases, educational resources and many more.

Map collection. Maps of continents/regions, countries, states, and provinces.

MapTech. This is the largest online mapping resource for topographic maps and charts for land, sea, and air.

National Atlas of the United States of America. This Web site displays an interactive map of the United States allowing the user to "map more than 2 million geographic names" in a series of map layers. These map layers display airports, federal lands, urban areas, water features, parkways, rivers, railroads, roads, volcanoes and seismic events with a Zoom In/Zoom Out feature. All these map layers can be downloaded along with very detailed technical information. In addition, other U.S. maps include a terrain relief and elevation map and a seasonal vegetation growth map, both of which require Shockwave.

National Geographic.com. Discover the Society's photos, maps, globes, magazines, worldwide expeditions, travel tips, vacation planning, and more.

Oddens' Bookmarks: The Fascinating World of Maps and Mapping. A comprehensive listing of cartographic sites. More than 13,000 unannotated links to mapping information on the Web organized in categories. Searchable by keyword and/or location.

Outline Maps. Countries and continents from About.com.

PCL Map Collection. Excellent collection of online maps of general interest ordered geographically. In addition, they have a FAQ, which includes directions for re-sizing and printing the maps, maps of special interest, historical maps, a great directory of city maps around the world, and links to other map collections. From the University of Texas Perry-Castañada Collection Map Library. About 5,000 of their collection of 250,000 maps are online.

Portals to the World. Portals to the World contain selective links providing authoritative, in-depth information about the nations and other areas of the world. They are arranged by country or area with the links for each sorted into a wide range of broad categories.

U.S. Gazetteer. This gazetteer is used to identify places to view with the Tiger Map Server and obtain census data from the 1990 Census Lookup server. You can search for places, counties or MCDs by entering the name and state abbreviation (optional), or 5-digit zip code.

World Atlas. World, regional and country maps are available at this site. Based on Holt, Rinhart and Winton maps.

World Gazetteer. This site provides statistics about current population of countries, their administrative divisions, cities and towns as well as images of the current national flags. Population

statistics are based on the recent census or the latest official estimates wherever possible.

Return to the Top of Page