Abstracts
Tuesday 10-June
Workshop: Geovisualization Tools and Techniques: From Paper Map to Game World
This course will provide a tour of techniques for creating, transforming, adapting, and presenting geospatial information to visualize local areas as static, dynamic, and interactive outputs. Tools will include GIS, Animation and Modeling tools, Procedural Generation tools, and game engines. There will be hands-on time with some of Blender, Autodesk Maya, SideFX, Houdini, and the Unity game engine using pre-built examples which will be available to participants to take away. A real focus here will be how geospatial ideas and techniques, coupled with visual effects ideas and methods, can be brought together to create new views of real spaces.
Registration is limited to 12 participants.
Workshop: GIS-Enabled Websites
ArcGIS Hub Sites (formerly open data sites) are an effective tool to share research and data across your organization. From air photos to historic maps, from active research to live dashboards. We will work through how to build a Hub site from the ground up and work through examples of how to expand it. We'll discuss customization tips and look at the back end deployment of sites like the Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador Mapping pages and the Northern Tornadoes Project Open Data Site.
Wednesday 11-June
Morning keynote address: Complexity and Digital Twins: All or nothing?
Digital twins have gained momentum in recent years as a promising approach to one of spatial data's enduring challenges: interoperability. By connecting siloed datasets and offering a shared, authoritative foundation of "reality capture" and 3D data, they open the door to more collaborative cross-sector work. For those familiar with the complexity of spatial data infrastructure (SDI), this may sound ambitious - perhaps even unrealistic. Yet the number of real-world applications continues to grow, and with them, the sense that Digital Twins are not just hype but a meaningful shift in how we understand and use spatial information.
This talk draws on examples from academia, government, and industry to explore how Digital Twins are reshaping the landscape of spatial data practices. After a brief overview of their potential benefits, I'll outline some of the core requirements and challenges involved. Finally, I'll pose two key questions: how much complexity do Digital Twins really demand, and how might advances in AI help (or complicate) their implementation?
The digitized historical National Topographic System 1:50,000 scale maps hosted by Scholars GeoPortal are a rich source of information for a wide range of academic disciplines and areas of interest. This collection will grow to over 15,000 maps in the future redevelopment of the GeoPortal, providing access to georeferenced coverage of every province and territory and temporal coverage ranging from the mid-twentieth century to the 2010s.
To enhance search and discovery for this extensive collection, the GeoPortal is using deep learning-based text extraction to add hundreds of feature label and toponym keywords to map metadata. This talk will explore how the diversity of cartographic styles, geographic features, and the time span of NTS map production call for methodologies that take into account the specificities of the collection. By examining pre-and-post-processing stages of extraction, it will suggest workflows that can be applied to other large map collections and invite discussion on how the meeting of new techniques and historical maps may be approached with material-based intention.
Map smart, not hard: How AI boosts your GIS productivity
Artificial Intelligence is rapidly transforming how GIS researchers plan and execute projects. This talk demonstrates how large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT can supercharge everyday spatial workflows.
This presentation will explore AI as a brainstorming partner to generate and refine project ideas across various educational disciplines. Next, the talk will show how AI can write geoprocessing scripts and ModelBuilder steps on demand, turning natural-language instructions into ArcGIS Pro workflows. The presentation will conclude by highlighting practical AI plug-ins that integrate directly into the GIS interface, enabling hands-on support without leaving your workspace. Geared toward non-programmers, educators and researchers, this presentation offers real-world examples of how GeoAI can enhance day-to-day work. Attendees will leave with actionable insights, helpful links, live demos, and beginner-friendly teaching resources to confidently explore AI in their own GIS practice.
Do these data need rescuing? Scraping the Alberta Homestead Index for geographic information
The Alberta Homestead Index is a community-created database of homestead application records for settlers in Alberta. It includes the name and geographic township reference for every homesteader who applied for land in the province between 1870 and 1930. The database was created in 2002 and it is precarious. It has not been backed up or archived in alternative locations, nor are the records available in preservation-ready formats. Currently, the only access point is the webpage of the Alberta Genealogical Society. While the original homestead records contain far more information than what was transcribed for the Index, they are handwritten, inconsistently digitized, and therefore not machine-readable.
In the summer of 2024, I scraped the Index using the Python package Scrapy. The process took over 16,000 minutes—11 straight days—to download 666,578 records hosted on 64,747 individual webpages. After cleaning and normalizing the data in OpenRefine, I began cross-referencing the records with my own transcriptions of annotated maps from the Alberta Township Survey. While my research has primarily focused on the settlement patterns of Ukrainians in the prairie provinces, the potential of these collections extends far beyond a single ethnic group, particularly when combined with de-anonymized census records.
This project engages with the Collections as Data framework (Padilla et al., 2023), which advocates for structuring and providing access to digitized collections in ways that support computational research, analysis, and reuse. The Alberta Homestead Index exemplifies both the opportunities and limitations of community-created datasets: while it provides a searchable entry point to homestead records, the lack of structured metadata, machine-readable formats, and long-term preservation planning significantly restricts its potential as a research dataset. This presentation will outline my process of integrating computational methods—such as web scraping and data cleaning—with archival research to transform the Alberta Homestead Index into a more accessible and analyzable dataset. I hope to demonstrate the value of treating historical records not just as static artifacts, but as dynamic data sources that can allow us to ask new questions about migration, settlement, and land use.
Project update: Scholars GeoPortal redevelopment and migration
Launched in 2012, the Scholars GeoPortal (https://geo.scholarsportal.info) is an academic geospatial data repository that provides researchers with an online tool to search for datasets, explore map-based features, and download GIS data. In 2012, the GeoPortal was awarded the Ontario Library and Information Technology Association (OLITA) Award for Technical Innovation.
After more than 10 years of service, the aging platform will be replaced with a modernized and transformed infrastructure, built to reflect the evolving technology landscape for geospatial data and repositories, new mandates for open data and open science at research institutions, and emerging research use cases for spatial data. The redevelopment work is being done by OCUL Scholars Portal staff with guidance and support from the OCUL GeoPortal Redevelopment Project Working Group.
In its first year, the WG has advised and supported two major project components: the front-end redesign and redevelopment, as well as an update and revision of the GeoPortal's metadata schema and best practices, and optimizing the existing metadata through manual and programmatic QA/QC processes. The new GeoPortal's anticipated release date will be in fall 2026, and this presentation will give a status report of the redevelopment's progress. Alongside a sneak preview of the new platform's refreshed look and feel--redesigned to replace the portal's current features--this presentation will describe some of the highlights of the redevelopment, across the full GeoPortal stack. The redesigned interface, built in-house, will provide a better search and navigation experience, with enhanced tools for data discovery (e.g. APIs), access and download, especially for large raster and vector data collections, like high-resolution topographic maps and orthoimagery. The new system will also facilitate more robust usage tracking and statistics gathering for metrics. Finally, we will illustrate how the new back-end and middleware architecture will support better management tools for data and collections, better data loading workflows, and metadata curation. both for Scholars Portal staff and institutional partners and local collection managers.
At project completion, over 5,000 geospatial datasets and over 3 million aerial images covering Ontario and Canada will be migrated to the new infrastructure. The new platform will continue to provide licensed and open data collections to institutional partners and the general public, including land-based vector data, provincial and municipal government data, census geography, and large collections of Ontario orthoimagery. Furthermore, more than 10,000 new topographic map sheets will be added to the GeoPortal's collection of Canadian National Topographic System (NTS) series maps. The map sheets, which were digitized and georeferenced by academic libraries, will be provided as open, enhanced datasets with rich metadata for discovery and access. This addition will expand the GeoPortal's already existing large collections of historical digitized and georeferenced maps provided by Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) members and beyond.
Navigating grant-funded research: Lessons from the Canadian Census Data Discovery Partnership
Sandra Sawchuk / Leanne Trimble
Academic librarians are often expected to conduct research, but may lack the confidence and experience to pursue funding opportunities in support of this work. This presentation will describe the evolution of an idea that began with a small group of data librarians, and turned into a multi-institutional grant-funded research project.
The Canadian Census Data Discovery Partnership (CCDDP) aims to increase access to historical and contemporary census data (including maps and geospatial data). In 2021 the project was awarded a $200K SSHRC Partnership Development Grant. Over the next four years, a group of 11 librarians and researchers from academic and government institutions across Canada worked with collaborators and students to conduct an inventory of census materials, understand the needs of the census user community, and create a prototype discovery tool.
This presentation will describe the lifecycle of the grant, from the application to the final reports. We will discuss the management of finances, student assistants, and working groups, while providing insights into maintaining motivation and managing expectations. By reflecting on these challenges, we will share what we’ve learned about interdisciplinary teamwork, balancing immediate project goals with future development, and the role of academic-government partnerships in scholarly initiatives. We will also reflect on our successes and offer encouragement to colleagues who may be considering applying for grant funding themselves. At the end of the presentation, we hope to solicit feedback on the potential next steps for this project in the context of the Canadian geospatial data community.
ACMLA-ACACC Bulletin: History, updates and exciting news
Meg Miller / Saman Goudarzi / Anne Hakier / Paul Pival / Martin Chandler
The Bulletin remains the hale and steadfast publication of ACMLA-ACACC. However, the times are always changing, and publications change with them. In this presentation, we will present some of the current work being done on the Bulletin; work being done to elucidate the past; and new ideas, sections, and possibilities for the publication going forward. Everyone is welcome to hear what's happening, ask questions of the editors, and discuss ideas presented or propose new ones. The presentation will be enhanced by the Bulletin writing time event, as well as future virtual writing events.
The Bulletin Editorial Team
All are welcomed and encouraged to drop by The Grad Club to finish the first day of Carto with a cold beverage and an informal drop-in writing session. This session will be facilitated by the Bulletin editorial team and is available as dedicated time for participants to work on potential submissions to the Bulletin. This may involve adapting your conference presentation or brainstorming new ideas. The team has pulled together these writing prompts to inspire your efforts!
Thursday 12-June
Morning keynote address: Mapping obfuscated histories in site-specific documentary media projects
My last two Research-Creation projects are both site-specific and collaborative. In Jerusalem I directed and produced Jerusalem, We Are Here and in Kingston I am the co-lead (with Laura Murray) of The Belle Park Project. Bot projects use documentary media (single channel, augmented reality, interactive documentary and more) to explore politically obfuscated pasts (the Palestinian in Jerusalem and both Indigenous and environmental violence respectively in Belle Park, Kingston). Both projects make legible, visible and audible that which the State (or City) does not want us to know, and through creative use of media, both harness the past to imagine different and more just futures.
In this presentation I will introduce the two projects, and focus on the ways we used maps, aerial photographs and urban planning documents to create an organic, user-generated map in the case of Jerusalem, We Are Here, and a vertical account of space over time in The Belle Park Project. The mapping side of Jerusalem, We Are Here, in particular, will serve as a case study for discussions of how it was built, and what is its value.
The Ontario Historical County Maps Project: A journey through historical GIS (~2002-2025)
The Ontario Historical County Maps Project is a Historical GIS initiative that began in the early 2000s. Over the years, project leaders and participants have come and gone, and the technology used to build this extensive database of land occupant names in southern Ontario has evolved. This presentation will showcase the "final" product of the project while providing a rich history of the historical GIS tools and approaches that have shaped HGIS in academia and libraries since the early 2000s. This presentation will also serve as a cautionary tale about undertaking large-scale mapping and data collection projects. We will share many lessons learned throughout the project's lifespan. Additionally, we will invite advice from the community during an engaging Q&A session following the presentation about the future of the project.
The Chilkoot Trail, Past and Present: Mapping the Klondike Gold Rush
In 1896, gold was discovered in the Yukon Territory which set off a massive migration of people to the Canadian north - the Klondike Gold Rush! Various routes for reaching Dawson City were travelled but the Chilkoot Trail was one of the most direct and economical paths into Canada which began in Dyea, Alaska. This presentation will use the ArcGIS StoryMaps platform to tell the tale of the Chilkoot Trail as stampeders travelled overground with a required one ton of provisions from Alaska to the Yukon in 1897-1898 in search of gold. Highlighting what is now the Chilkoot Trail National Historic Site, the StoryMap will use historical maps and a combination of archival and personal photography to compare places of interest along the trail - past and present!
At the beginning of the twentieth century, on the Silk Road, in the deserts of Chinese Central Asia, an archaeologist followed the footsteps of his dead guide along a dry river. This archaeologist, the internationally famous explorer Sir Aurel Stein (1862-1943), supported by the British government, searched for ruins, artifacts, evidence of underground waterflows, and a path across the supposedly uncrossable Taklamakan desert. On this route, he found them all. Drawing on published maps and archival documents, this paper traces the cartographic afterlives of Stein’s encounter with his guide and this river, showing how he retold and reshaped his guide’s story for popular audiences, in scientific journals, and in confidential military documents.
Since 2022, the Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador team has been mapping massacre sites and sites of historical memory of the Salvadoran Civil War. The team first presented on the initial massacre mapping project at Carto 2023, and then at Carto2024, we provided an update on how the project had evolved to encompass robust mapping of historical memory and physical evidence of community erasure and settlement destruction. This talk discuses the project’s next progression, and how the team has combined remote sensing data (lidar), precision GNSS field surveys and, historical memory work to virtually reconstruct villages as an act of healing and preservation. The talk provides a general overview of our workflow from site selection and survivor recruitment through to 2D mapping in ArcGIS pro, to the processing of 3D terrain and the 3D modelling building reconstructions in Unity and Blender. The talk, furthermore, provides lessons-learned and best practices for supporting community-based research with remote sensing technologies in resource-limited regions.
Into the dungeon: Shifting a quarter-million maps to the sub-basement
The University of Toronto’s Map & Data Library (MDL) holds one of the most significant map & atlas collections in Canada, comprising more than 250, 000 sheet maps along with more than 16, 000 atlases, gazetteers and books. Due to a planned renovation of MDL’s home on the 5th floor of Robarts Library, the decision was made to permanently move the entire print map collection to on-site storage. The move was complicated by space constraints and tight timelines, but was completed in summer 2023. In this presentation, we will present a post-mortem of the move and its aftermath. We will review the logistics of moving a large collection of maps, the implications for the library catalogue, and provide an overview of our new map request and retrieval workflow. We will also discuss issues around change management for both our user community and our library staff members, including an end to browsing and our attempts to fulfill broad, ambiguous, exploratory, or otherwise “fuzzy” requests. Finally, we will consider ways to ensure that the map collection can continue to inspire and inform users despite its reduced physical presence.
Historical maps: Efforts, metadata and spelling of place names and Indigenous Peoples
While technological advances such as the remarkable Machines Reading Maps and associated Text on Maps now exist and assist researchers to find maps, efforts by geospatial and maps staff and metadata folks still matter. If the spelling of place names and/or Indigenous Peoples on (historical or otherwise) maps is not the same as current spelling usage, good metadata describing maps with contemporary spellings is imperative and relevant. However not every feature on historical maps can be described and as two examples, dashed line former unnamed trails and historical railroad spur lines, are only found on historical maps and revealed by constant labours of love. Thus researchers' needs still inform retaining historical maps and services in map libraries. This presentation will address the above issues in a cohesive flavourful and easily digestible stew wtih some dashes of humour.
Persevering through a preservation project
Using our Air Photo Digitization Project as a case study, attendees will hear about the ebbs and flows, joys and woes of persevering through a preservation project. From the birth of an idea to the final resting place of contact prints in the Archives and digital assets in Permafrost, the story of Niagara’s most comprehensive air photo collection deserves to be shared! It takes time and more time to endeavor to preserve a collection of thousands of unique individual snapshots in time. Many hours were spent scanning, saving, converting, mosaicking, georeferencing, publishing, packaging and preserving the Brock Library’s air photo collection. Is it worth it? Heck ya! The resulting web apps used for disseminating the images to the public have received hundreds of thousands of views over the many iterations and years in the making. And I shudder to think, are we there yet? Nope. It is the project that keeps on projecting. Join me on a walk down memory lane as we look at what it means to persevere through a preservation project.
Addressing key priorities in geospatial data management in Canadian academic libraries
Julia Guy / Renna Truong / Sarah Zhang
There is a wealth of literature on geospatial data management and curation in academic libraries, particularly case studies encompassing various aspects of geospatial data management and curation in different institutional contexts. It is evident that universities and academic libraries adopt different approaches to collecting, storing, curating, and disseminating geospatial data. Building on the literature available, including a very useful recent article providing an overview of the landscape, researchers from Simon Fraser University and the University of Calgary aim to provide an in-depth comparison of the different approaches to geospatial data management currently employed at several Canadian academic libraries. Using a semi-structured interview method, the researchers gathered data from a sample of libraries across Canada on how they are addressing key priorities including interoperability of data, digital preservation, and user experience in their geospatial data management. The study also identifies factors that are influencing decisions around spatial data management and explore whether approaches are meeting the current and future needs of users. In this lightning talk, the researchers will present their preliminary research results in the hopes of informing professional practice around spatial data management in academic libraries in Canada.
ArcGIS StoryMaps as geospatial instructional tools
Western University's Map and Data Centre has a collection of about 60,000 air photos. Over the past three years, student assistants have scanned these photos and collected metadata to support the creation of an interactive air photo viewer. This viewer was made available to users in 2024, with over 10,000 scanned air photos of London and surrounding communities and counties. During my time as a student library assistant beginning in fall 2022, I helped with scanning and metadata collection.
After the interactive viewer was made available, we noticed that some users were struggling with the new interface, while other users continued to struggle with the original paper finding aids. It was clear that additional support was needed for both our in-person and online users. This talk illustrates how I used ArcGIS StoryMaps to build interactive instructional tools for finding and accessing physical and digital air photos, and discusses the problems and resolutions that arose from this project.
Saman Goudarzi / Rosa Orlandini
Map collections are facing pressure from all angles - often relegated to the margins of libraries while both administrators and users exhibit signs of cartophobia. Regardless of a collection's size, we are faced with classic challenges such as: How do we provide access to our collections for users? How do we describe and document our maps, especially in the absence of a dedicated cataloguer? What best practices should we follow for storing and transporting maps? How do we effectively teach with maps? Where can we buy maps? ... and much more. This lightning talk proposes a support community / community of practice for print map collection managers, archivists and librarians.
Archival Architectural Records Discovery Layer Project
The Archives and Special Collections at Western University houses approximately 4000 archival architectural records, illustrations, and plans from prominent architects and firms within and surrounding London, Ontario from as early as 1840. Previously, due to the scope and complexity of the records, patrons did not have ready access to finding aids or discovery tools. The Archival Architectural Records Discovery Layer Project is the first step to making the collection accessible through robust documentation of metadata and enrichment with spatial data.
This talk explores the AARDLP team's process to create an interactive spatial discovery layer through the convergence of architectural records, historical maps, and GIS. The talk covers the unique challenges of working with archival architectural records including the processes used to identify historic or unlabeled addresses, and consulting archival directories, fire insurance plans, and heritage records to locate these buildings.
Empowering stewardship: The Trent Lands Database Initiative
Trent University's Symons Campus, located on the treaty and traditional territory of the Michi Saagiig Anishnaabeg, is committed to preserving its diverse landscape through the University Green Network (UGN). The UGN, managed by a systems-level plan called Ggwepnandizamin and individual Trent Lands Nature Area Plans, aims to protect natural heritage, promote Indigenous traditional knowledge, and support academic research. Facilities Management collaborates with Trent Library's Maps, Data & Government Information Centre to collect, manage, and visualize spatial data, enhancing accessibility and adopting best practices in data analysis. This partnership has led to various projects that benefit the academic community by providing support for teaching, research, and online presence management.
At the confluence of GIS, Data and RDM Librarianship
Trent University Library & Archives recently hired me as the Research Data Services Librarian. This role encompasses acting as Head of the Maps, Data & Government Information Centre (MaDGIC) as well as continuing to build and sustain services to support research data management at Trent. With a small team and a broad mandate, we are beginning to explore how we might apply service design methods to continuously improve research data services that are relevant and responsive to the needs of our users.
Friday 13-June
"This is Fine": Organizing and managing geospatial data collections in academic library environments
Rebecca Bartlett / Francine Berish / René Duplain / Kara Handren
Organizing and managing institutional geospatial data collections is something many of us are engaged in but rarely talk about outside our own libraries. While each institution has technical and organizational realities that are different than others, panelists will share their experiences and insights and leave plenty of time for discussion.
A new computer lab opened in Carleton University's MacOdrum Library in October 2023 which provided the opportunity to deliver a GIS workshop series aimed primarily at graduate students. The library's GIS team updated pre-2020 workshops and developed new sessions which they first presented in winter 2024. The workshops incorporate both lectures and hands-on components, and workshop series design, registration logistics, and hardware/software challenges will be discussed.
Kaleidospatial wunderkammers - in case of an exhibit, remain displayed
Physical map displays and detailed exhibitions (including the publication of pamphlets and catalogues), are longstanding ways to promote and engage, through a point of discovery, staff, students, faculty and the public, with the contents of our cartographic research collections. The presentation will highlight a year of crafting (transubstantiation) map displays that were grouped thematically and/or temporarily.
Displays that are in-house and ongoing (Indigenous mapping, glacier maps, landform maps and plastic relief models) making use of over 100 map cabinet tops in the public area of the fourth floor of Cameron Library at the University of Alberta.
Displays that were crafted on-the-fly as a result of class requests (Ancient and Medieval Studies), including consolidating additional materials to sit alongside the maps such as monographs, articles and/or links to online scans, virtual GIS-based enhancements, YouTube clips and the all-important cartobibliography.
Displays that were taken out of the collection space and reassembled as part of teaching and workshops at other locations on campus, and within the city of Edmonton.
Finally, the presentation will note the interesting and trying aspects of curating a map display that needed to be encased in small glass portals, requiring map resizing, cropping and the blending of maps together to create a collage, while linking out to related material, essentially churning kaleidospatial wunderkammers into displays of cartographic QRcode-iosities.
Collaborative speculative maps: Capturing group worldbuilding as cartographic outputs
As part of extensive reworking of an existing Queen's University course on Worldbuilding, the notion of a shared world with 38 students collaborating on a series of creative exercises was introduced. Exercises that progressed from approximately Bronze Age (Earth-equivalent) to approximately 1900CE (Earth-equivalent) were carried out both as group work and as individual creative outputs. In an early exercises, groups collaboratively built a world which they then populated, and over the 3000 years of simulated history chose how states arose, merged, disappeared, and reappeared as archaeology for later civilizations. The initial mapping was quite simple, and this resulted in a mix of flexibility and confusion as details were crafted in individual creative elements.
One student (Jack Hickey) quickly emerged as the class cartographer, communicating with map images through a Discord discussion server. This involved a mix of accumulating the world-as-described and working with groups to 'repair' conflicting histories, which became part of the narrative of the shared world in some cases. A particular element he introduced was a link between history, place, and language using his grounding in linguistic theory and history.
We will review both how the process emerged and evolved, and how it might be refined with intentional design for future iterations of the course.
A professional photogrammetrist's perspective on client use of aerial photographs
Great care is taken to preserve and catalogue air photo collections by libraries. Across the counter, the users of these collections are diverse, from the public, to amateur historians, students, academics, and engineering firms. Graeme will relate his experience with collections as a professional Photogrammetrist. From the collection side; training Archives Ontario, and National Air Photo Library (NAPL) staff in user requirements. He will also present his work on the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) conservation committee. From the user side, he will discuss how he uses the photos daily in his work as the Ministry of Transportation's Remote Sensor. He will cover his academic endeavours as an advocate for the collections as a historic resource, and his PhD work recreating the Lost Villages of the St. Lawrence.