Dalhousie will officially celebrate the Grand Opening of its new GIS Centre – the largest Centre of its type in any library in Canada – this Wednesday, November 16th, at the Killam Library at 9:00 a.m. The Grand Opening is part of GIS (geographic information systems) Day, an international grassroots event that showcases real-world applications of geographic information systems technology.
The location of the GIS Centre within the library is unique in Canada. Most libraries offer access to data and software, as well as basic instruction, but the Dalhousie GIS Centre pushes this field into a whole new service, research and teaching direction. The Dalhousie Centre and information commons infrastructure is the largest for GIS in Canada. Dalhousie has more GIS staff, interns, and services than any other Centre in the country, and is rapidly adding more course offerings and online access. There are over 150 computers throughout the library system that are GIS functional, including five high end workstations in the main Commons, two in the Map Collection, and six in the GIS Centre. Dal also has a large format plotter capable of printing full size colour maps.
The event is principally sponsored by ESRI Canada with the added support of the National Geographic Society, the Association of American Geographers, University Consortium for Geographic Information Science, the United States Geological Survey, The Library of Congress, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, and the Association of Canadian Map Libraries and Archives (of which Dalhousie is a member). This year's theme for GIS Day is “Migration: The Human Journey.”
Many of the sponsors and partners of the Centre will be on hand for demonstrations and to answer questions about GIS. There will be prizes, tours, and a contribution by ESRI Canada, in the form of a scholarship for a Dalhousie student studying GIS ($1000 cash, and $30,000 worth of software).
Dalhousie’s GIS Centre is located in the Killam Library Learning Commons. GIS, through geographic analysis and understanding, guides us to seeing the world around us in new way and inspires us to do more to solve tough human and natural problems.
About Dalhousie: Dalhousie is a comprehensive, research-intensive university with more than 15,500 students. In The Scientist magazine, it was recently named one of the best non-commercial places to work as a scientific researcher outside the United States.
Media inquiries, contact:
Charles Crosby
Charles.Crosby@dal.ca
Phone: (902) 494-1269
Fax: (902) 494-1472
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