The Geography Computing Facility

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There are currently two computer labs.

The main Computer Cartography Laboratory is in room 535 McCone Hall. It is equipped especially for cartography and other advanced graphics, and is used primarily by undergraduate students in the cartography class and other computer-based classes. Graduate students also have access.

The Dickinson Library computer room, 540 McCone, is for geography graduate students only.

Room 508 houses departmental servers.

Use of the labs is available to graduate students in geography, declared geography majors, and students in classes based in the lab (such as the cartography class). Before students may use the labs, they must fill out a User Agreement, pay a printing fee, and attend a two hour orientation session (offered early in each semester).

Students who have registered, paid, and obtained a door code can access the labs during specified hours.

A printing fee of $15 is required of all users when they first register. Continuing undergraduate students will pay $15 per semester. Graduate students will pay each semester proportional to their usage, calculated at 5¢ per page.

The Computer Cartography Laboratory (room 535) is equipped with ten Power Macintosh G4 and G5 computers, with 21 to 23 inch monitors. There are no diskette drives (3.5 inch "floppies") in this lab. There are several CD-R and DVD-R burners. All computers are internet connected.

There are two flatbed scanners, one letter size and the other tabloid-plus (12 by 18 inches). The large scanner has a transparency adapter. There is also a 35mm filmstrip and slide scanner. The main printer in this lab is letter and tabloid size, 600 dpi monochrome. A large format inkjet plotter, with sizes up to 36 inches wide, software PostScript RIP, is available by special arrangement.

There is a color laser printer and a medium format photo-quality inkjet printer (Epson Stylus Pro 4000) in room 515. Contact Don Bain (dbain@berkeley.edu) to use these printers.

A computer projector and laptop (Macintosh iBook) can be used for presentations. See Dan Plumlee to arrange for use (within McCone Hall only).

The Dickinson Library contains five iMac computers, and a letter size 600 dpi laser printer. All are internet connected. All computers have Zip drives, and CD-R, but only two have diskette drives (3.5 inch "floppies").

The Facility maintains three servers.

The primary fileserver "Great_Kahuna" is a Mac OS-X server, with support also for Windows and unix file service.The Group_Folders volume supports classes and work groups. The Users volume has a folder for each registered use, for file storage and to host a personal web site.

The Geography_Webserver is an Apache server running under Mac OS-X, and hosts the departmental web site: http://Geography.Berkeley.EDU. This web site is managed by Darin Jensen (djensen@berkeley.edu).

The Geo_Images server hosts The Geo-Images Project (http://GeoImages.Berkeley.EDU), a collection of imagery, mostly by Berkeley geographers, for use in teaching geography. The Geo-Images Project is managed by Don Bain (dbain@berkeley.edu). It now also hosts the World Wide Panorama (http://GeoImages.Berkeley.EDU).

No general computer skills class is currently offered. A range of subjects are available for any group of three or more students who request it. Subjects available include graphs and charts, spreadsheet, illustration, map projections and map drawing, web page construction, database, image processing, and desktop mapping/GIS.

The class Cartographic Representation (Geography 183, 4 units) is offered each spring semester, taught by Darin Jensen (djensen@berkeley.edu), the departmental cartographer. It is an intensive class covering practical methods of map creation with computer tools. Admission to the class is limited and by instructor approval only.

A workshop on the creation of geographically oriented web sites is offered occasionally. Contact Don Bain for more information. Special seminars on VR photography can also be arranged.

The geography department specializes in the art and science of traditional cartography, now drawn with computer tools. Training is provided in the cartography class (see above).

Qualified student cartographers can be employed to draw maps for dissertations and publications, under the supervision of the staff cartographer. For more information contact Darin Jensen (djensen@berkeley.edu).

GIS is supported by the university-wide Geographic Information Science Center (gisc.berkeley.edu). There are no GIS facilities in the geography department.

Training in GIS is provided by the course Geographic Information Systems (Geography 188X, cross-listed with Landscape Architecture). For more information contact Prof John Radke (ratt@gisc.berkeley.edu).