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A New Method for Locating and Accessing Library Map Collections Google Map Mashups Kristi Jensen, Map Librarian University of Minnesota Twin Cities

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Searching for maps is hard. Why not? How do users find maps? Can we improve it? Browsing is inconvenient..

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a mashup is a web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool. -Wikipediaweb application Example: Some Map MARC records have coordinates. Embedded map applications, like Google Maps, allow you to map them. Librarians (testing their programming skills) can combine them into a single integrated tool that we call: M AP H APPY. M AP H APPY : Why not

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Step 1: Get the data M AP H APPY : How we did it Step 2: Build the database Step 3: Map to interface

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Step 1: Get the data M AP H APPY : Phase 1 Library Map Count Main1196 Science201 Agriculture125 Duluth 1119 Duluth 297 Forestry45 Archives22 Fisheries6 Crookston2 Veterinary1 Health1 Total1815 A focus on Minnesota Maps.

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Step 1: Get the data M AP H APPY : Phase 1 The pilot showed about 66% of the records had some coordinate info. Records that cant be displayed on the map can still be displayed as search results.so results are similar to those from an OPAC search.

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Step 1: Get the data M AP H APPY : Phase 1 Many records contained faulty data and required clean-up. Outliers were easier to identify during the pilot phase. Minnesota maps in Missouri?

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Step 2: Build the database M AP H APPY : Phase 2 The corrected records were downloaded into a separate database with the MARC fields we found valuable.

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Step 2: Build the database ACCESS DENIED M AP H APPY : Phase 2 Gaining access to a university server to run a SQL database was not easy.

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Step 3: Map to interface M AP H APPY : Phase 3 The Google Map API is open source code, but some assembly required.

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Map Happy Google Map API Key Gmap.js search.php or data.xml mySQL database home.phtml style.css M AP H APPY : How it Works

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Step 3: Map to interface M AP H APPY : Phase 3 The map interface displays maps based on their center point, then links back to the catalog record.

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Step 1: Get the data Step 2: Build the database Step 3: Map to interface M AP H APPY : How we did it

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Step 1: Get the data Step 2: Build the database Step 3: Map to interface ACCESS DENIED Roadmap to Success!

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M AP H APPY : Intuitive Interface

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M AP H APPY : Search functions

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M AP H APPY : Discovery Tools

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Scalability to records with no coordinates? Solutions: create coords programmatically based on subject-headers Clean-up records manually using physical map coordinates. Incorporation into formal library catalog? User testing suggested that users expect each record in Map- happy to link to a digital map How to incorporate digital maps/air photos User-interface (source code bare-bonesneed php and mysql queries for searching and linking back to resultsprogrammer!) Many, many more. M AP H APPY : Issues

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http://www-dev.lib.umn.edu/scieng M AP H APPY : Try it out!