NYSGA GUIDEBOOK DATABASE AVAILABLE AS AN EXCEL SPREADSHEET
The NYSGA now permits downloads of its collection of scanned conference Guidebooks, through 2012, for free. One obstacle, particularly for new users, is trying to determine which Guidebook will have field trips for a particular area of interest. To address this we have converted the stops and views from the Guidebook Road Logs into kml format and put these on an interactive map on the web. As of this writing, we have converted the Guidebooks from 1956 through 1999 and work continues on more recent ones.
In the process we developed a database, which currently contains 6,500 stops and views. This can be downloaded as an Excel spreadsheet and associated Word document that will let users search the database and output selected stops and views as a csv, xlsx or kml file. It permits users to limit searches to within some distance from a given spot, and thus seems useful to folks making Geolore field trips.
Each stop contains its year and field trip, permitting the user to download just the relevant chapter from the web. These chapters, many containing detailed maps, can then be integrated into a final Geolore field trip guide. The stops and views can be viewed on Google Earth or exported to tablets or phones for apps such as Avenza Maps, Pocket Earth, etc.
This presentation will review the history of the project and show how to use the Excel spreadsheet and Word document to assist in constructing a local field trip.