The Geo-Images Project

The Geo-Images project was conceived as a way of making images (mostly photographs) that are useful in teaching geography more widely available.

It was conceived, constructed, and is maintained by G. Donald Bain, in the Geography Computing Facility, University of California at Berkeley (dbain@berkeley.edu).

The Problem
Most people teaching geography or other environmental subjects have their own collections of slides, frequently the product of years, or even decades, of travel and diligent work. Students agree that good pictures make a class come alive.

But few of us are willing to loan our slides, even to our closest colleagues. Duplicate slides are never as good as the originals, and there is no practical way to include location and subject captions with the slides. Frequent use exposes a slide collection to possible damage or loss. So an individual's slide collection is really only accessible when he or she can personally present it.

The Solution
Digital storage of photographic images, and their distribution over computer networks, solves many of these problems. Duplication is easy, cheap, and the duplicates are identical to the originals. Degradation and loss are no longer an issue. Captions can be stored in databases associated with the images, providing sorting and searching capabilities that would be almost impossible otherwise. Collections can be shared over the internet with colleagues, or with strangers.

If you have an educational project that could make use of Geo-Images materials, please read the section on Conditions for use of these images.

History of the Project
The Geo-Images project began with a collaboration between Don Bain, Director of the Geography Computing Facility, University of California at Berkeley, and Jim Proctor, Professor of Geography at the University of California Santa Barbara, (jproctor@geog.ucsb.edu). A curriculum development grant (UCSB) provided funds to digitize 900 slides on the general subject of people and the environment.

The original contributors were Don Bain, Cherie Northon (formerly Cherie Semans, formerly the Berkeley Geography department's cartographer, now Professor of Geomatics, University of Alaska, Anchorage, cheries@mapmakers.com), Paul Starrs (Professor of Geography, University of Nevada at Reno, starrs@equinox.unr.edu), and Robert Reed (Professor of Geography emeritus, Univeristy of California, Berkeley, rrreed@garnet.berkeley.edu). Lisa Hamilton managed the project, compiled database information, and processed the images.

Subsequent to the original 900 slide acquisition, a curriculum development grant (UC Berkeley) was acquired by visiting professor James Miller (Professor of Geography, Clemson University, MILLER3@CLEMSON.EDU) to digitize his collection of slides portraying everyday life in Morocco. Jim set a new standard for organization and captioning. Jason Sadler, later with Moon Press Travel Guides (jsadler@saber.net), drew the map of Morocco (copyright 1994 J. Sadler).

In July, 1994, The Geo-Images project was made available on the World Wide Web, probably the first site of its kind.

In September 1995 Don Bain and Lisa Hamilton created a few QuickTime VR virtual reality panoramas of the Berkeley campus. These were added to Geo-Images, initiating a completely new category of geographic imagery. As the VR collection expanded in importance, it migrated to its own site: Virtual Guidebooks (http://VirtualGuidebooks.com). Geography major Landis Bennett (landis@mac.com) has also contributed panoramas.

In 1996 a curriculum improvement grant was obtained to digitize additional images of physical geography. Lisa Wells (formerly with Berkeley Geography, subsequently Professor of Geology at Vanderbilt University) provided images illustrating her courses in geomorphology. These images were processed by Tenara Blood (tenara@gomontana.com) and arranged and captioned by graduate student Peter Weber (pweber@uclink2.berkeley.edu). Douglas Powell, long-time instructor with Berkeley Geography (and several other institutions in Northern California), and leader of the department's fabled field course for 28 years, provided images of Afganistan, snow survey in the Sierra Nevada, and of the White Mountains of California.

Also in 1996, Cherie Northon obtained a grant to digitize her aerial views of California and Alaska, life on houseboats in San Francisco Bay, and of Frnech Polynesia. This same grant was used for Tom Eley's images of life on the Kiwai coast of Papua-New Guinea. Tom (thom@mapmakers.com), another Berkeley PhD, is now living in Alaska.

In January 1997, Don Bain scanned in a few of the Geography department's collection of antique glass lantern slides, initiating another new category of imagery. Over the summer of 1998 John Rigdon, working under the supervision of Dan Plumlee (dplum@berkeley.edu), scanned several hundred more lantern slides. This work was continued the next year by Luis Quehl. Preparation of these images for the web is ongoing.

Present Status

Currently Geo-Images consists of fourteen chapters:

• Don Bain's images of the California environment. These have been selected to each illustrate a short disquisition on some aspect of man and environment. They can be accessed through subject and regional lists, or from a clickable map.
• Jim Miller's images of daily life in Morocco, with scenes from the city, countryside, mountains and desert oases.
• Doug Powell, retired after many years as instructor and field class leader in Berkeley Geography, has provided images of Afghanistan in 1976-78, when he visited there to advise the government on evaluating snow as a water resource.
• Cherie Northon's images of Hong Kong, focusing on life on the houseboats and in squatter settlements and relocation projects.
• Sharon Johnson's images for teaching physical geography. This chapter, prepared by Kat Kalamaras, has been used to illustrate the course Geography 1: Global Environments, as taught at UC Berkeley.
• Paul Starrs' images of the American West (primarily between the Sierra-Cascade divide and the 100th meridian), emphasizing ranching and water issues.
• Don Bain's pictures of the Western states (excluding California), featuring environmental issues and parklands.
• Virtual reality panoramas of the Berkeley campus, taken by various members of the Berkeley geography department.
• Landis Bennett's virtual reality panoramas.
• A sample of Don Bain's virtual reality panoramas of western North America and French Polynesia.
• Cherie Northon's oblique air photos of the Pacific coast states from California to Alaska.
• Berkeley Geography PhD Tom Eleynow living in Alaska, has put together a series illustrating his life as a geographer on the Kiwai Coast of Papua New Guinea.
• Images of Arabia by Professor Jean-Francois Troin
• Lisa Wells (formerly Professor of Geography, University of California, Berkeley) images illustrating principles of geomorphology, primarily from her field research in South America.

In Progress

Several hundred glass magic lantern slides, illustrating California at the turn of the century, have been scanned and are being prepared for the web. A small sample is currently available on this site.

Professor Robert Reed's 200 slides of Southeast Asia (primarily the Philippines, Burma, and Vietnam) are still in preparation.

Douglas Powell, long-time instructor with Berkeley Geography (and several other institutions in Northern California), and leader of the department's fabled field course for 28 years, has provided images of snow survey in the Sierra Nevada, and of the White Mountains of California. Mr Powell will be working with Don Bain to organize and caption these images in summer 2001.

Cherie Northon is working on two more series of images. One is of French Polynesia, where she has taught at the university's field station on Mo'orea. The other concerns houseboats on San Francisco Bay, another long-term interest.

In the Future

Other potential contributions to Geo-Images have been identified.

Berkeley faculty who have expressed interest in Geo-Images include Beatriz Manz (Guatemala, refugees), and David Stoddart (tropical islands, coral reefs, insular tortoises). Emeritus faculty in the Berkeley department who it is hoped will participate include Hilgard O'Reilly Sternberg (Amazon, China), and Theodore Oberlander (geomorphology, deserts). Long-time Berkeley Associate Forrest R. Pitts is organizing his images for a presentation on agriculture in Japan and Korea.

Unfortunately, Geo-Images is essentially a one-man project which Don Bain works on in his "spare" time. For this reason it is necessary to be very careful in selecting collaborators -- so far it has been limited to personal friends from the Berkeley geography department.

But if you have a great idea that fits in with the general idea of Geo-Images, have some money for creation of Kodak Photo-CD's, and are willing to put in the time to process, label, and caption the images, I would like to hear from you (dbain@berkeley.edu).

One important caveat -- you must have full rights to use the images submitted (usually meaning that you were the photographer), and be willing to lose some (at this point hard to quantify) of those rights by publishing them on the internet.

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