This document summarizes geospatial support at Stanford University. It describes the university's centers for spatial research, technical infrastructure including software and computing resources, courses that teach geospatial concepts, and outreach activities. It also profiles several key staff who provide geospatial support and instruction to academics across many departments.

1. Geospatial
Outreach and
Support at
Stanford University
Julie Sweetkind-Singer
Assistant Director of
Geospatial, Cartographic and
Scientific Data & Services

2. Stanford Facts
 6,887 undergraduate students
 34% H&S, 13% Engineering, 2% Earth Sciences,
51% Undecided
 8,779 graduate students
 39% Engineering, 25% H&S, 11% Medicine, 11%
Business, 7% Law, 4% Education, 3% Earth
Sciences
 1,903 total faculty

3. Centers for Spatial Research
 Spatial Analysis Center (Earth Sciences):
Environmental change research
 Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve (Biology)
 Carnegie Institution for Science(Dept. of
Global Ecology): Earth ecosystems study
 Natural Capitol Project (Woods Institute for
the Environment): Conservation projects
 Spatial History Project (History)
 Visualizing the Rural West (Bill Lane Center for
the American West)

4. SU Library’s Technical Infrastructure
 Branner Earth Sciences Library Computer Lab
 8 high end machines with dual monitors
 Site License Management
 ESRI: ArcGIS, ArcPad, ArcSDE
 ArcGIS on over 800 machines across campus
 Google Earth Pro
 Installed on all library-owned, publicly available
computers (600+ machines)
 Stanford Geoportal (under development)
 Geospatial programmer
 Stanford Digital Repository

5. Support Infrastructure
Civil & Environmental
Earth Sciences Anthropology Political Sciences
Engineering
(Fundamentals of GIS) (Spatial Approaches) (Spatial Approaches)
(Fundamentals of GIS)
Geography Undergrads
Week &
Class Support
GIS Day
Instruction Grads &
WhereCamp: Branner Library Consultation Post-docs
Outreach
Community GIS Services Data Center
Participation Support Center
Faculty
Collaboration
GIS Special Data Resource Center
Interest Technical Support
Group
Staff
Academic
Technology The Spatial Digital Humanities
Specialists History Project Specialist

6. Geospatial Support at Branner Library
http:lib.stanford.edu/gis

7. Patricia Carbajales, Geospatial Manager
 Support for aspects of GIS that are a commodity
 Workshops and teaching
 Over 100 workshops in the last 2 years for over 450
students
 Integration into classes
 Fundamentals of GIS (principal instructor)
 Urban Mapping Practicum (technical assistant)
 Student project and research support
 Advance training for power users
 Staffing:
 2 student assistants (20 hours/wk)

9.  Resources include:
 Software instructions, ability to download the
instructors’ slide deck, step-by-step
tutorials, presentation tools, and programming
code.

12. Formal GIS/Spatial Teaching
 Global Positioning Systems (Aero/Astro)
 Digital Methods in Archaeology (Anthropology)
 Quantitative Analysis in Archaeology & Anthropological Research
 Cities in Comparative Perspective (Anthropology/Urban Studies)
 Spatial Approaches to Social Science (Anthropology/Poly Science)
 Environmental and water resources engineering design (C & EE)
 Modern Journeys in Ancient Lands (Classics)
 The Earth from Space: Intro. to Remote Sensing (Elect. Eng.)
 Remote Sensing of Land Use/Land Cover (G&ES)
 Fundamentals of Geographic Information Systems (G&ES)
 Statistical Methods for Earth/Enviro Sciences: Geostatistics
(G&ES)
 Remote Sensing of the Oceans (Geophysics)
 Spatial History: Concepts, Methods, Problems (History)

13. 0
10
20
30
50
60
70
80
40
C&E Eng
Earth Systems
G&ES
Urban Studies
Biology
Arch /Anthro
Undeclared
Epidemiology
IPER
Economics
Human Biology
Mech. Eng
Computer Science
East Asian…
Geophysics
Management…
Math &…
English
Int'l Relations
Materials Science
Music
Fundamentals of GIS: 2002-2008
Poly Sci
Communications

14. Fundamentals of GIS: 2009-2011
60
50
40
30
20
10
0

15. Creation of content
 Map scanning lab
 Internal materials from Branner Earth
Sciences Library, Special Collections
 External materials from private donors:
Digital Philanthropy

16. The Spatial History Project
 http://spatialhistory.stanford.edu
http://spatialhistory.stanford.edu/

17. The expansion of the
western railroad,
1879-1893

19. Tooling up for Digital Humanities
 Collaboration between the Spatial History
Project and the Computer Graphics Lab
 Weekly workshop series in 2011
 Library Presenters (4 of 8 workshops):
 Digitization & Archives: Glen Worthey - Digital Information
Services
 File Management & Databases: Claudia Engel -
ATS, Anthropology
 Text Mining & Analysis: Matt Jockers – Co-
director, Stanford Literary Lab
 Visualization in the Humanities: Nicole Coleman – ATS, SU
Humanities Center
 http://toolingup.stanford.edu

20. Nicole Coleman: Academic Tech. Specialist
 Runs the SU Humanities Center Research Lab
 Large-scale international collaborative research
 Linking humanities projects to design and computer
science researchers
 Spatial visualization rather than geospatial analysis
 https://republicofletters.stanford.edu/

21. Franklin’s
Letters
Voltaire’s
Letters

22. Claudia Engel: Academic Tech. Specialist
 Assignedto the Anthropology Department
 Research support and teaching
 Outreach directly to the faculty
 Spatial and numeric data, video, field research
 http://www.stanford.edu/~cengel/
cgi-bin/anthrospace/

23. Spatial Approaches to Social Science
 Urban Studies: 31 (BA)
 Anthropology: 10 (Phd), 6 (BA)
 Human Biology, Earth Systems: 4
 Education, Classics: 3
 Archaeology: 2
 African Studies, Art & Art
History, Chemistry, Civil
Engineering, Economics, Education, English, E
nvironmental Engineering, Environment &
Resources, Heath Services Research, Political
Science, Law: 1

24. Elijah Meeks: Digital Humanities Specialist
 Dedicated support for faculty integrating
spatial or network analysis into their
research.
 Proposal process
 Stability of research support
 Projects changes, he stays
 Blog: https://dhs.stanford.edu

25. Integration of network and sea routes in Imperial Rome

26. Outreach and Collaboration
 GIS Day/Geography Week
 GIS Special Interest Group
 http://gissig.stanford.edu
 Joint project with NYPL on their Map Warper
application
 Sponsorship of WhereCamp 2011
 Collaboration with Google on workshops
 Participation in ThatCamp, the Data Visualization
MeetUp Group, Digital Humanities 2011
Conference at Stanford

27. Challenges
 Demand is up
 Competing needs
 Complexity of the software / high learning
curve
 Increasing need for robust computing
infrastructure
 Lack of coherent curriculum for teaching
spatial thinking and methodologies

28. Overall value
 Support of high profile research
 High visibility of services
 Demand continues to grow
 Services provided to an impressive array
of departments and schools

29. The Future
 VITA (Visualization and Textual Analysis)
 Library/Faculty collaboration to
capture, distribute and retain faculty data
 Expansion of digital humanities support
 Expansion of digital maps program

30. Contacts
 Julie Sweetkind-Singer
 sweetkind@stanford.edu
 Patricia Carbajales
 carbajales@stanford.edu
 Nicole Coleman
 cncoleman@stanford.edu