From Lesson #9 – Geographic Sources

In this lesson, you learned about geographic sources. You learned about the evaluation of geographic materials, and the problem of staying current in today's world. Online atlases and gazetteers generally provide up-to-date information, and are good sources to keep in mind. Consider ease/clarity of navigation, currency of information, or, if appropriate historical significance and cost. Share your findings on the Discussion page.

There are so many resourceful opportunities available to students for finding geographical information either in print form or using on-line resources such as current world atlases, historical and thematic atlases, maps, gazetteers, geographical dictionaries, travel guidebooks, geographical thesauruses and on-line map resources just to name a few. At times keeping up to date with print resources in your library is a difficult task and the availability of on-line resources is so extensive and invaluable to any school library. I also never thought of contacting municipal government and regional agencies in order to request free, up-to-date maps. It is invaluable for any school library resources centre to take advantage of all the free on-line geographical resources available. The visuals alone are wondrous with the ability to view the earth, countries, cities, forests, desserts all by satellite maps. Students are in awe and love to look up places they know or want to visit, where their parents came from or places they would love to live. Thematic maps are amazing resources especially in combination with historical places or civilizations. I have helped students look at historical features of old city centres and their surroundings which may include rivers, desserts and soil conditions and how the geographical area contributed and effected the civilizations within ancient cities.

I have found that many geographical web sites are easier to navigate than other subject resource sites. Some great websites include: National Geographic and The Canadian Atlas Online. Both reputable sources, the maps allow you to zoom in for close up viewing and zoom out for a broader view of the landscape. They are both current and quite easy to navigate although you can get lost in all the information presented. The National Geographic offers many opportunities to explore on each of the pages with general headings always being offered at the top of the screen, such as Maps Home where you can zoom into different areas on the globe, MapMachine where you can look up any place name and view by road map, satellite, bird’s eye and 3D view, there are various Print Collections from around the world, Atlas Puzzles to solve and Atlas Explorer. The Canadian Atlas Online is a great reference of Canadian provinces and territories. It contains sections such as Explore the Maps, Explore by Themes, includes a Gazetteer and Glossary of terms, a Learning Centre, Games and Quizzes and a CG Kids Atlas version. I liked that you can choose from a variety of topics in the learning centre to explore.