Notice: Access to Special Collections material, the Reading Room, and Instruction will temporarily be suspended starting on Aug.12, 2024 as the collection will be moved from the basement to 3 East. Normal operations are anticipated to resume late in the semester. Read more for current updates.
Notice: Access to Special Collections material, the Reading Room, and Instruction will temporarily be suspended starting on Aug.12, 2024 as the collection will be moved from the basement to 3 East. Normal operations are anticipated to resume late in the semester. Read more for current updates.
Notice: Beginning Sunday, September 8th, all MSU all students, staff, and faculty must scan their MSU ID to access the MSU Library building between 10:00 pm – 7:30 am on Sunday - Thursday.
Notice: Beginning Sunday, September 8th, all MSU all students, staff, and faculty must scan their MSU ID to access the MSU Library building between 10:00 pm – 7:30 am on Sunday - Thursday.
Notice: Access to Special Collections material, the Reading Room, and Instruction will temporarily be suspended starting on Aug.12, 2024 as the collection will be moved from the basement to 3 East. Normal operations are anticipated to resume late in the semester. Read more for current updates.
Notice: Access to Special Collections material, the Reading Room, and Instruction will temporarily be suspended starting on Aug.12, 2024 as the collection will be moved from the basement to 3 East. Normal operations are anticipated to resume late in the semester. Read more for current updates.

Today's Hours:

Today's Hours:

Open 24 hours

Open 24 hours

By Appointment from 9 to 5

Closed

Featured

MSU's 1863 Land Grant

September 09, 2024

Kathleen Weessies

What land was actually behind MSU's Land Grant? See an interactive map of the actual land parcels selected through the 1862 Morrill Act program.
Map of MSU's 1863 land grant

John Farmer, Mapmaker

August 06, 2024

John Farmer was Michigan’s most astonishing mapmaker. His accurate and detailed maps of Michigan, dating 1825-1859 coincided with an enormous influx of settlers.
A man in a black suit

Footpath to Freeway

August 06, 2024

Michigan maps evolved in step with the development of the road system and showed advances such as named roads and numbered state and federal routes. Publishers include map giants Rand McNally and Gousha who supplied oil companies with their ubiquitous freely distributed road maps.
A man in a car and a map

Events & Workshops

  • September 25, 2024 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM

    Learn the basics of QGIS, the free open-source geospatial software—this workshop will demonstrate how to make a choropleth (color shaded) map, load shape-files and .csv table files into QGIS, join data to spatial information and edit features.  This workshop will be held online. Registration is required.

  • October 09, 2024 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM

    In this workshop, participants will learn the basics of ArcGIS Online, a simple browser-based tool for making maps with data. Because this tool is browser based and requires no software to be installed, has built-in datasets, and is easy to use, it provides the capacity to create mapping data projects and share them on the web very quickly. Participants will learn how to make an MSU account for access, how to add points to a map from a spreadsheet, how visualize data in a map, find data for comparison within ArcGIS Online, and to style and export their maps from the application. 

  • November 13, 2024 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM

    ESRI and Knight Labs Story Maps combine narrative text, images and other content with maps to create spatially based narratives for the web. Story Maps are an easy-to-use powerful tool for presentation of all kinds of information to a public audience. They are great for classroom projects. In this workshop, we will compare the ESRI and JS versions of StoryMap and learn how to use Story Maps incorporating a variety of media types and formats.

View all Events & Workshops