About This Site

Background
Content
Search
Fieldsite Designations and How They Are Represented on the Map
Acknowledgments
Colophon

Background

This site originated with a wall-size map displayed as part of an exhibit Anthropology at Berkeley: A Century of Pathbreaking Scholarship, 1901-2001. For that project, map tacks placed at the fieldsite location for each of Berkeley's Ph.D. dissertations provided a quick overview of the geographic concentration of UC Berkeley's doctoral program in anthropology from its inception to the present. Four colors of tacks, each representing a 25 year period, provided a snapshot of the growth of the department in its first century.

The present project expands on the static map with the development of an interactive map allowing for other views of dissertation work done in Anthropology at Berkeley.

This resource will be updated as more dissertations are completed. If you have any questions, comments, or corrections, please send an e-mail to Suzanne Calpestri at scalpest@library.berkeley.edu

Content

The initial database of dissertations used for this project were those completed for the Ph.D. in Anthropology at UC Berkeley between 1901 and July 24, 2002. Future dissertations will be incorporated annually thereafter.

For each dissertation the following data is available:

Search

A multi field search feature, allowing a "search all" function, or individual fields as desired. The search results are dispalyed on the map with red markers. Detailed search results in text format are simultaneously presented on the right. For more information about searching, click here.

Fieldsite Designations and How They Are Represented on the Map

Using information from the title, abstract, figures and maps included in the dissertaton, acknowledgements, and body of the texts, at least a general location for most dissertations was identified. For this database, the location of the culture or group under study was used, even if the dissertation was completed entirely in Berkeley. For example, a dissertation about cultural change in Germany as identified through changes in metaphor would have its location marker in Germany, even if it was compiled solely through library research at the University of California itself.

Utilizing the Columbia Gazetteer, the GEOnet Names Server, and the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names, a majority of the research locations were able to be placed quite specifically. However, for some geographical locales there is less detailed information available through these services (less cartographic work may have occurred there; fewer locations have actual entries). When unable to pinpoint the exact research location, the general coordinates for the smallest identifiable level (city, state, region, country, etc) were used. These coordinates usually identify the political capital of the larger entity.

A number of circumstances required deviation from this general policy. First are those dissertations whose subject locations are regional in scope. In order to provide a point on the map for these regional projects, an arbitrary single location at or near the visual center of the region in question as it is presented on the interactive map was selected. The following lists the location points in decimal degrees for the regional studies:

Regional Location

Latitude

Longitude
Pacific Northwest 48.24 -124.69
Great Basin 41.24 -117.39
New England 44.02 -71.33
North America 46.83 -102.04
Latin America -23.69 -64.42
Europe 50.46 15.00
Southeast Europe 43.24 21.96
Scandinavia 60.12 11.81
Africa/Central Africa -0.40 18.83
East/Southeast Asia 13.79 104.25
Melanesia -12.60 161.29
Polynesia -8.53 -169.36
Australia -27.00 145.32

The second circumstance involves study locations disguised through the use of pseudonyms. Where pseudonyms were used, the dissertation was "located" at the smallest level of identification present. For instance, if the name of the county or state was identified, we placed the location on the map as general to this level. Once again, the location of counties or states occurs at the political capital of the entity.

Finally, all dissertations completed in laboratories, libraries, or research centers on the University of California, Berkeley, campus and without an additional location marker were given the same location at (37.867, -122.267). Bay Area studies are listed at (37.7, -122.267). California is listed at (37,-119) for generic and pseudonymous studies.

Acknowledgments

Suzanne Calpestri, The John H. Rowe Librarian, Principal
Gabriel Olson, GIS Web Programmer

Database development: Amy Ramsay, Elizabeth Roberts, Stephanie Sadre-Orafai
Consultants: John Creaser, Lynne Grigsby-Standfill,
Web design: Grace Morales

Colophon

Map Interface

The interactive map interface was created using features of the free for use Google Maps API. The dissertation records dataset was prepared using Microsoft Access and Excel, and is interactively queried and displayed using a combination of PHP and MySQL, connected to the map interface by AJAX technology.

Global Imagery

All imagery is provided by Google Maps, and is subject to the terms of use and license agreements as established by Google Maps. Detail and quality varies depending on the region of the world. The date of the imagery is noted at the bottom of the map interface, according to the information provided by Google.

Web Interface

This website is best viewed in (preferably) Mozilla / Firefox +1.x, or Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5x or later versions. Optimal screen resolution is a minimum of 800 x 600 pixels. A screen resolution of 1024 x 768 or larger is recommended.

The typeface used in all illustrative graphics is Franklin Gothic Medium. The text set is Arial, Helvetica, sans serif.

This website was made using Macromedia Dreamweaver 8. Graphics were created using Adobe Photoshop 6.0.

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© 2002 by The Library, University of California, Berkeley. All rights reserved.
If you have questions about this page, e-mail Suzanne Calpestri <scalpest@library.berkeley.edu>.
Last updated November, 2002.