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New York Public Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Download and Use

New York Public Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Download and Use
When I was a kid, my father brought home from I know not where an enormous collection of National Geographic magazines spanning the years 1917 to 1985. I found, tucked in almost every issue, one of the magazine’s gorgeous maps—of the Moon, St. Petersburg, the Himalayas, Eastern Europe’s ever-shifting boundaries. I became a cartography enthusiast and geographical sponge, poring over them for years just for the sheer enjoyment of it, a pleasure that remains with me today. Whether you’re like me and simply love the imaginative exercise of tracing a map’s lines and contours and absorbing information, or you love to do that and you get paid for it, you’ll find innumerable ways to spend your time on the new Open Access Maps project at the New York Public Library. The NYPL announces the release with the explanation below: The Lionel Pincus & Princess Firyal Map Division is very proud to announce the release of more than 20,000 cartographic works as high resolution downloads. Related Content:

http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/new-york-public-library-puts-20000-hi-res-maps-online.html

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Download 448 Free Art Books from The Metropolitan Museum of Art You could pay $118 on Amazon for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s catalog The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry. Or you could pay $0 to download it at MetPublications, the site offering “five decades of Met Museum publications on art history available to read, download, and/or search for free.” If that strikes you as an obvious choice, prepare to spend some serious time browsing MetPublications’ collection of free art books and catalogs.

Westmoreland County Tax Maps The Westmoreland County Department of Geographic Information Systems helps Westmoreland County to fulfill a statutory requirement that all taxable property needs to be mapped to aid in the tax assessment process. Using cutting age technology, Westmoreland GIS is able to provide a layout of properties, at and below the surface, both in the past and present. This information is made available in a variety of formats to the paying and public requestors via the GIS Tax Mapping website and a secure file transfer site. The Guggenheim Puts 109 Free Modern Art Books Online Back in January, 2012, we mentioned that the Guggenheim (the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed modern art museum in NYC) had put 65 art catalogues on the web, all free of charge. We’re happy to report that, between then and now, the number of free texts has grown to 109. Published between 1937 and 1999, the art books/catalogues offer an intellectual and visual introduction to the work of Alexander Calder, Edvard Munch, Francis Bacon, Gustav Klimt & Egon Schiele, Fernand Léger, and Kandinsky.

The Map Room The Map Room is a blog that points to maps, map collections, map-related resources, and material about maps on the web. Anything that fits under that rubric, from medieval mappæ mundi to satellite imagery, and from topo maps to Tolkien, is fair game. Launched in March 2003, The Map Room is aimed at a broad audience. Download Original Bauhaus Books & Journals for Free: Gropius, Klee, Kandinsky, Moholy-Nagy & More In 1919, German architect Walter Gropius founded Bauhaus, the most influential art school of the 20th century. Bauhaus defined modernist design and radically changed our relationship with everyday objects. Gropius wrote in his manifesto Programm des Staatlichen Bauhauses Weimar that “There is no essential difference between the artist and the artisan.” His new school, which featured faculty that included the likes of Paul Klee, László Moholy-Nagy, Josef Albers and Wassily Kandinsky, did indeed erase the centuries-old line between applied arts and fine arts. Bauhaus architecture sandblasted away the ornate flourishes common with early 20th century buildings, favoring instead the clean, sleek lines of industrial factories.

Visualizing World Birth and Death Rates Close This is a simulation. The d3 javascript library by Michael Bostock Interface design based on that used in my collaboration with Bill Snebold on the US Birth/Death Visualization World geometry data from this 50m data file used in this example by Michael Bostock Population data primarily from the CIA Factbook population data, with some data from wikipedia's list of populations Birth rate data primarily from the CIA Factbook birth rates with some data from wikipedia's list of birth rates. This birth rate is the annual average number of births per year per 1,000 persons in the population at midyear (this is also called the crude birth rate). Digital Collections and Services: Access to print, pictorial and audio-visual collections and other digital services Historic Newspapers Enhanced access to America's historic newspapers through the Chronicling America project. Historic Sound Recordings The National Jukebox features over 10,000 78rpm disc sides issued by the Victor Talking Machine Co. between 1900 and 1925. Performing Arts Collections, articles and special presentations on music, theater and dance materials from the Performing Arts Encyclopedia. Prints and Photographs Catalog of about half of the Library's pictorial holdings with over 1 million digital images. Veterans History Project Experience first-person stories of wartime service through personal artifacts, audio and video interviews.

40 Maps That Will Help You Make Sense of the World If you’re a visual learner like myself, then you know maps, charts and infographics can really help bring data and information to life. Maps can make a point resonate with readers and this collection aims to do just that. Hopefully some of these maps will surprise you and you’ll learn something new.

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