Monday, April 12, 2010

Touring the Geomap Geological Data Center

The APLIC conference always includes a tour of a local information center. It's one of my favorite parts of the conference. I knew that we were touring the Geomap Geological Data Center in Dallas which is the largest supplier of geologic mapping services in the United States. These service are used to determine the best places to drill for oil and petroleum and other fuels. It was a large paper based library of "logs" - little journal books about a certain location. I thought it would be very high tech with lots of GIS and seismic tools. It was very low tech, in fact.
Here are some photos:







Memphis: America's Aerotropolis

The Library unit at the Carolina Population Center has recently been renamed to Library and Research Translation Services. The "research translation" name reflects the evolving role of the unit in finding and sharing information about the center's research. This includes various activities from identifying news media stories about CPC's research to verifying peer reviewed journal articles by our researchers.

I'm attending the APLIC conference, the conference for population librarians, in Dallas. It is held the three days before the PAA conference. I had a stop-over in Memphis from Chapel Hill and as I was walking to my departure gate, I noticed a sign in the airport that named the Memphis airport as "America's Aerotropolis."

I noticed it, kept walking, and turned back. That term - aerotropolis (which I have typed many, many times) - was coined by CPC Fellow John D. Kasarda in his efforts to promote economic development near airports by creating business and commerce opportunities near airports.

You can learn more about the aerotrpolis concept here.

You can read about Memphis as America's Aerotropolis here. Their tagline is "Where runway, road, rail & river merge."