ALA collaborates with Florida State on library geographic database mapping project
Contact:
Denise M. Davis
Director, Office for Research & Statistics
dmdavis@ala.org
For Immediate Release
May 4, 2005
ALA collaborates with Florida State on library geographic database mapping project
CHICAGO - Have you ever wondered how many public libraries are in a congressional district? Or, have you ever wondered who the congressional representative is for a community or group of communities? A new collaboration between the American Library Association (ALA) and Christine Koontz of GeoLib, the Public Library Geographic Database (PLGDB) Mapping project at Florida State University, will now enable users to answer these questions and many more.
"This information will be an enormous help to ALA's Washington Office in our discussions with members of Congress,” said Emily Sheketoff, ALA Washington Office director.
Florida State's Public Library Geographic Database (PLGDB) is America's first ever Web-accessible and digitally-mapped public library database . It includes the locations of America's 16,000 public libraries, population characteristics from the U.S. Census that best describe people who use libraries, as well as library-use statistics from the National Center for Educational Statistics.
ALA-sponsored enhancements to the GeoLib hosted PLGDB mapping tool include:
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A mapping layer of the 109th U.S. Congressional Districts for each state
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A pop-up window listing public library outlets in each congressional district (with name of library and city of location)
A connection to the ALA CapWiz elected officials search page will be linked to from within GeoLib
http://capwiz.com/ala/dbq/officials/ .
To learn more about this valuable online mapping tool, visit
http://www.geolib.org/PLGDB.cfm . The Web site has tutorials on its use, including a navigational movie.
