Ask an IPL Librarian
Have a question? Ask an IPL Librarian!
(Use our Contact Us form for questions/suggestions about our site.)
Home » Subject Collections » Social Sciences » Geography

Geography

Information on the earth, its features, the distribution of life, and political boundaries.

SEE ALSO MagazinesAssociations on the Net

Sub-headings:

Flags
Resources relating to flags and banners of political and other entities.
Maps & Atlases
Collections of maps.

Resources in this category:

Australian Cartographic Resources on the Internet
http://www.nla.gov.au/oz/maps.html
Includes links to information on map publishers, Australian map societies, and geographic facts about Australia. Part of the National Library of Australia Internet Subject Lists project.
The Columbia Gazetteer of North America
http://www.bartleby.com/69/
"With 50,000 entries, the Gazetteer covers every incorporated place and county in the United States, along with several thousand unincorporated places, special-purpose sites, and physical features, as well as Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean." Search, or browse an alphabetic index.
Countries
http://www.ipl.org/div/pf/entry/48458
Do you need to do a school report on Finland? Are you looking for information about countries in Latin America? This IPL pathfinder is designed to find print and Internet resources about nations and regions around the world. You may have to consult a variety of sources before you find all the information that you need.
Country Studies
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/cshome.html
Online versions of 101 country studies published between 1988 and 1998, which detailed information on countries' geography, society, economy, transportation, communications, government, politics and history. To find information on a particular country, search or browse alphabetically or by continent.
Distance Calculator between Cities
http://www.mapcrow.info/
Directly calculates the coordinates and distance between most international cities. Displays a simple map of the results.
Earth
http://www.alexandria.ucsb.edu/other-sites/Earth.html
Links to reference resources related to the planet Earth and the oceans and continents. Includes links dealing with climates and meteorology, agriculture, the environment, and more. Also includes several kinds of maps.
Footnotes to History
http://www.buckyogi.com/footnotes/
This site is dedicated to providing information about former nations that are largely unknown, and not referenced in many textbooks. Many of these nations were short-lived, quite small, or ethnic regions.
Geography in Action
http://www.geographyinaction.co.uk/
"This site is for use by all geography students and teachers, although much of it has been designed with the Northern Ireland Geography curriculum in mind." Topics include ethnic diversity, urban structure, landscapes, place names, images, geology, among others.
Geography Network
http://www.geographynetwork.com/
Search for maps and geography applications.
GEOnet Names Server
http://earth-info.nima.mil/gns/html/
This database allows searching for geographic information on countries outside of the United States. It includes not only towns, cities and other populated places, but also features like rivers, lakes, roads, tunnels, schools, even individual rocks and other obscure features. The database will provide exact latitude and longitude information for the features.
Geosource
http://www.library.uu.nl/geosource/
"Geosource is a collection of links to webpages with information in the subjects that are being taught and studied in the Faculty of Geographical Sciences of Utrecht Unversity, Netherlands. These are: Environmental Science and Policy Studies; Human Geography; Physical Geography; and Planning Science. Geosource intends to serve the academic community in the field of geography and planning and (to a lesser extent) geoscience and environmental science. It's compiled, updated and maintained by Jeroen Bosman, subject librarian for Geography, cartography, Planning and Environmental Science at the Uithof Library Centre of the Utrecht University Library."
GeoSources: The Canadian Geography Website
http://www.ccge.org/ccge/
"Canada's foremost resource for geographical information on the web. Learn about Canada, its people and places. GEOsources also has news, quizzes, lesson plans for teachers, new themes each month, and much more." Available in French and English.
Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/vocabulari...
Developed primarily for the field of art history, the TGN is a structured vocabulary of nearly 1 million place names representing approximately 900,000 places. Users can browse the world hierarchically, or use the search function.
Glossary of Cartographic Terms
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/glossary.html
A lengthy glossary of cartographic terms for use by cartographers, geologists, geographers or hydrologists. Excerpted from Maps for America, 3rd edition.
How Far Is It?
http://www.indo.com/distance/
Calculates the distance (as the crow flies) between two places. Very few places outside the United States are included.
How Stuff Works
http://www.howstuffworks.com/
Have you ever wondered how a car engine works? This site answers questions about the way all kinds of things work-- from refrigerators to computers to the human body.
Land Use History of the Colorado Plateau
http://www.cpluhna.nau.edu/index.htm
Environmental history; summary of a vast body of research from multiple disciplines in an easily accessible format.
Links to the Past
http://www.cr.nps.gov/
"Information and news from the National Park Service programs in archeology, ethnography, historic landscapes, historic structures, history, and museum management."
NationMaster.com
http://www.nationmaster.com/index.php
"Welcome to NationMaster.com, a massive central data source and a handy way to graphically compare nations. NationMaster is a vast compilation of data from such sources as the CIA World Factbook, United Nations, World Health Organization, World Bank, World Resources Institute, UNESCO, UNICEF and OECD. Using the form above, you can generate maps and graphs on all kinds of statistics with ease."
Places of a Lifetime, Places, Travel, Tips, Photography - National Geographic
http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/places/places-of-a-life...
Essays and information on popular travel destinations around the world. Each city feature includes articles written by "a recognized authority on the city", pictures, travel tips, links, and recommended books. Browse places alphabetically, or by continent, region, country, and city. Includes a section on U.S. National Parks.
START Natural Language Question Answering System
http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/infolab/globe.html
The START Natural Language artificial intelligence server at MIT interactively answers all kinds of geography questions posed by Web users in natural language queries. Ask questions or make requests such as "Show me a map of Turkey?," "What is the population of Rome?" or "What cities are within 300 miles of Moscow?"
TerraServer--USA
http://terraserver-usa.com/
The Microsoft Terra Server is an online database of satellite photographs of the planet earth. The images are from two sources: the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and Spin-2. Images are searchable and there is a listing of famous places too.
U.S. Board on Geographic Names (BGN)
http://geonames.usgs.gov/
Search for places in the United States by feature, state or county name, population or elevation range. Returns detailed geographical data for each region found using the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) and NGA GEOnet Names Server (GNS). Also find information on the BGN.
UNESCO World Heritage Centre
http://whc.unesco.org/
The World Heritage center manages the World Heritage List of over 800 sites, monuments, or buildings around the world that have been deemed to be culturally, historically, or ecologically significant. Also contains World Heritage-related news and information.
Wolfram|Alpha
http://www.wolframalpha.com/
Wolfram Alpha quickly locates facts, graphs, definitions, tables, numbers, formulas, and other data. Use the "Examples" page to browse and see all the different topics covered.
World Desk Reference
http://dev.prenhall.com/divisions/hss/worldreference/
"The World Desk Reference is packed with facts and statistics, maps, illustrations and diagrams. Each of the world's nations is analysed in up to 19 subject areas, from Climate to Chronology, from Aid to Transportation, from Politics to Economics. Key features: A complete overview of the modern world: physical, political, historical and economic; Each of the 192 nations surveyed and mapped in detail including full coverage of the world's newest nations; An invaluable guide to 20,000 of the world's most important places, including alternative spellings and recent place-name changes; More than 5,000 illustrations, charts and diagrams, and over 600 maps, 25,000 facts and statistics."
The World Gazetteer
http://www.gazetteer.de/
"This site provides information about current population of countries, their administrative areas, cities and towns as well as images of the current national flags." Includes place names in non-Roman scripts which can be displayed in unicode-capable browsers.
Worldwide Gazetteer
http://www.gazeteer.com/gazeteer/v2/index.aspx
A geographical dictionary with links to Web resources related to each country. Each entry links to resources in the following categories: brief overviews, research about the country, newspapers, business, politics and economics, health and wealth, language, and travel.

What is the IPL?

The Internet Public Library is a public library for the world wide web.
Students from a consortium of colleges and universities with programs in information science develop and maintain the IPL!
Here are some of the partners in the IPL Consortium. A complete list is found on the IPL Consortium page.

The iSchool at Drexel Florida State University College of Information
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Graduate School of Library and Information Science Rutgers School of Communication and Information Studies University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science University of Pittsburgh School of Information Sciences
Syracuse University School of Information The University of Texas at Austin - School of Information The Information School - University of Washington

The Internet Public Library is hosted by The iSchool at Drexel, College of Information Science and Technology,
with major support from the College of Information at Florida State University.

Sponsored by Intel and Sun Microsystems
Copyright Notice
© 1995-2008 The Regents of the University of Michigan. All rights reserved.
© 2009, Drexel University, All Rights Reserved