University of Wisconsin-Madison Communications
This is way too cool to resist sharing it with the rest of the class: The UW-Madison has launched an interactive online campus map that blows all previous campus maps out of the water.
From Eagle Heights and Frautschi Point in the map's northwest corner, the map encompasses the Lake Mendota shoreline all the way to Lowell Hall and from there south to the Kohl Center. But what's cool about the map are its interactive features. Among them:
- The capacity to highlight arts venues, athletic facilities, free campus bus routes, housing, natural areas, public parking, science outreach venues, visitor centers and wireless locations, or to select individual sites on the map.
- A toggle that allows users to switch between cartographic and aerial photo views of the map.
- The option to click on a building to call up its address and, in some cases, a list of the departments and programs housed there, with links to those departments.
- A ruler tool, useful for such purposes as calculating the shortest route from a workout at the SERF to that study group at Steenbock Memorial Library.
- A search engine to help you zero in on, say, the Barley and Malt Laboratory or Allen Centennial Gardens.
- The opportunity to get the URL for your resulting map for emailing to friends and neighbors.
While there may not be as much information as you might like in some cases, the new map shows great potential for additional features, such as more data and links for campus natural areas, or links to ticket information for UW sports and theater events. But as it is, the new map holds value for almost anyone, including folks who think they know the campus like the back of their hand.
