Library Guides: Digital Scholarship Research Guide: Finding and Mapping Data

Finding Geospatial Data

US Census Bureau
TopoView
USGS National Geospatial Program Datasets
National Historical Geographic Information System
Provides easy access to summary tables and time series of population, housing, agriculture, and economic data, along with GIS-compatible boundary files, for years from 1790 through the present and for all levels of U.S. census geography, including states, counties, tracts, and blocks
Big Ten Academic Alliance Geoportal
A portal connecting users to digital geospatial resources, including GIS datasets, web services, and digitized historical maps from multiple data clearinghouses and library catalogs, managed by librarians and geospatial specialists at 13 Big Ten institutions.
Social Explorer
Explore over 500,000 data indicators and over 220 years of data for the United States from present to 1790, including all Decennial Censuses, American Community Surveys and many other datasets. Available on campus or by creating an account with an ISU email address.
ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World
A collection of ready-to-use global geographic content from Esri, including imagery, basemaps, demographics and lifestyle, landscape, boundaries and places, transportation, earth observations, urban systems, oceans, and historical maps. Available with an ISU netID and password.
Amazon Web Services
Large public data sets in the terabyte range.
City of Chicago Data Portal
dedicated to promoting access to government data and encouraging the development of creative tools to engage and serve Chicago's diverse community. The site hosts over 200 data sets presented in easy-to-use formats about City departments, services, facilities and performance.
Fraser
The Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research (FRASER) started in 2004 as a data preservation and accessibility project of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. FRASER can be used in conjunction with other Federal Reserve resources, including FRED, ALFRED, the Federal Reserve System Historical Gateway, and curriculum developed by economic education staff.
London Data Store
Published by the Greater London Authority, the Data Store over 600 data sets related to life in London. Winner of the 2015 Open Data Institute Publisher Award.
TranStats - Bureau of Transportation Statistics
Transportation statistics from the BTS includes data on transportation by mode (e.g. airline) and subject (e.g. safety). Be sure to check the database directory for a list of the available data sets.
David Rumsey Map Collection: Georeferenced Maps

A Quick Introduction to GIS and Data from the US Census Bureau

For additional GIS tutorials from the US Census Bureau visit the Open Mapping Education Series.

GIS Tools

In addition to the ESRI products offered through the ISU GIS Facility, there are a number of great open-source and/or free options for doing geospatial analysis.

QGIS
Free, open-source professional GIS application built and maintained by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo)
Open Street Map
Free, open-data platform providing world-wide geographic data.
Leaflet
Open-source Javascript library for building mobile-friendly maps.
Map Warper
Free, open-source map and image geo-rectification service, requires sharing your rectified maps publicly on the platform.
Historypin
Web-based platform for crowd-sourcing maps with a cultural or historical component.
StoryMapJS
Free web-based map storytelling tool in a slideshow format.
Google Earth
A web-based mapping service with an advanced desktop version, both are free to use.