MDL Tutorials
This guide is primarily designed to help users unfamiliar with the CANSIM database to find and download data through CHASS.
Please note that a University of Toronto IP address is required to access CHASS.
Note: CANSIM data may also be accessed through the Statistics Canada website. Tutorial available here.
This guide is primarily designed to help users unfamiliar with the CANSIM database find and download data.
Note: This guide outlines how to search for CANSIM data on the Statistics Canada website. University of Toronto faculty, staff, and students may also download CANSIM series for free via CHASS. You will need to be using a UofT IP address to access CHASS.
ArcGIS Online training Videos created by Marcel Fortin, GIS and Map Librarian, January 2021
This tutorial will help you install ArcGIS PRO on your Windows operating system. Please request a license code before beginning the installation process. If you are a Mac user, please read this page about running Windows in OS X before requesting a code.
ESRI ArcGIS StoryMaps online workshop videos, January 2021
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Set up environment
Cleaning data in python
- Download Dataset
- Load dataset into Spyder
- Subset
- Drop data
- Transform data
- Create new variables
- Rename variables
- Merge two datasets
- A few last words
FME (File Manipulation Engine) is a powerful software package that allows users to quickly convert spatial and non-spatial datasets into other formats to facilitate sharing and interoperability. One of its components, FME Quick Translator, is an easy-to-use utility that provides a straightforward translation workflow via a simple graphical user interface. This guide demonstrates how to use FME Universal Translator to convert geospatial data from one format to another using an older file format (ArcInfo Coverage, .e00) as an example.
This tutorial will demonstrate how to convert geospatial datasets saved as shapefiles into AutoCAD format.
This is a beginner’s guide to creating a point layer in ArcGIS 10.2 using the latitude and longitude of the locations you wish to display. The first part of this guide will walk you through creating an Excel file of coordinates found in decimal degrees that are set up and ready to be imported into ArcGIS. How to locate coordinates online will also be discussed. This guide will then walk you through bringing your data into ArcGIS and creating your point layer on top of a base layer of countries.
Digital elevation models (DEMs) are geospatial datasets that contain elevation values sampled according to a regularly spaced rectangular grid. They can be used in terrain analysis, 3D visualizations, and hydrological modelling, among other applications. DEMs can be stored in several different formats; however, conversion into a raster dataset is often required for many processes. This tutorial explains how to derive contours from DEMs using ArcMap and ArcScene.
This guide is suitable for new Tableau users looking for information on producing popular data visualizations in Tableau, such as bar graphs, line graphs, scatterplots, tree maps, and dashboards. If you are looking for more general data visualization tips, please see the Map and Data Library's Data Visualization Guide. You can find instructions on installing and acquiring a free academic license for Tableau here. If you are running Tableau on a Mac, please note that there may be some variation between the Windows version used to design this guide and the program as it appears on a Mac.
The data used in this guide are public datasets retrieved from the World Bank’s Open Data repository, the United Nation's Open Data Population Division, and the full text of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet available through MIT's website, with a frequency table generated through Voyant Tools. You can find more information regarding the data sources used in this guide in the subsection entitled "10. Data Sources".
This tutorial was created using Tableau Desktop version 2020.2.
This tutorial introduces Gale's Digital Scholar Lab (DSL), a digital humanities tool. In this tutorial, you will learn how to:
- Build a collection of texts
- Clean texts
- Run analytical tools on texts and visualize the results
- Download the data, graphs, and other visualizations produced through this tool
- Download the scanned texts in your collection, so that you can use them in other programs
Note: Gale consistently updates the Digital Scholar Lab, so some features of this tutorial might not always match the latest interface. This tutorial was last updated in August 2020 and last reviewed in March 2021.
National Resources Canada (NRCAN) produced a portal called GeoGratis for allowing access to, and downloads of, their high-quality, free, and publicly available maps and geospatial data. This tutorial guides you in navigating their Product Index to find data on a specific location, and it is easily adaptable for other locations or desired data products.
Tutorial demonstrating how to load SDA data for use in STATA.
In the case you need to acquire detailed city data to produce a large-scale map and we don’t have what you’re looking for in our data inventory, there is a chance that the user-contributed maps of OpenStreetMap.org may do the trick. You can export data from OpenStreetMap and open it in ArcGIS to use it in your own maps.
You may have noticed that many GIS datasets contain information about a geographic extent that is larger than your area of interest. Your research may involve analysis of data related to a single municipality in Ontario, yet you have only been able to locate a dataset showing all municipalities located within the province. Alternatively, you may be interested in only displaying a selection of features on your completed map, such as the Canadian cities you have selected as case studies for your research. This tutorial will demonstrate how to extract just the features you need from larger datasets, saving them to new files that you can then use to map and analyze your data.
This tutorial demonstrates how to find paper maps and atlases in the University of Toronto Libraries catalogue, then locate them in Map & Data Library's fifth floor collection.
Link to a video tutorial on how to find statistics and manipulate tables to get the data you need.
Model builder is a feature in ArcMap that can be used to automate tasks. It is especially useful for batch processing. You can create a model by dragging and dropping objects, tools, etc. and then running the model in ArcMap. You can hard code specifics like file paths into your model or have your model prompt a user for information to make it more flexible. You can also save your model and share it with others. To illustrate how you would get started and to demonstrate some model builder functionality, let’s work through a couple of examples. All the files needed to follow along and try out the examples are found in the .zip file you can download from http://maps.library.utoronto.ca/datapub/modelbuilder/ModelBuilder.zip. For the following examples, these files are extracted into a C:\Test\ directory.
This tutorial walks you through accessing Constellate using the University of Toronto's institutional privileges. Please see our general Constellate page for more information and see our tutorial on creating a dataset once you have logged in.
University of Toronto community members can access online GIS courses through ESRI Academy. Content is designed for beginners and experienced users.
This tutorial shows you how to build a dataset in Constellate. We recommend reading our general information on Constellate first. Please also see this access tutorial in order to log in with institutional privileges.
Georeferencing is the name given to the process of transforming a scanned map or aerial photograph so it appears “in place” in GIS. By associating features on the scanned image with real world x and y coordinates, the software can progressively warp the image so it fits to other spatial datasets. This tutorial will explain how to georeference a raster image in ArcGIS so it can then be used as an overlay or for digitizing purposes. In this example, a historic Toronto map will be georeferenced using a dataset of city streets so we can see what existed on the site of Robarts Library before it was built.
This tutorial describes how to request a license for NVivo 12 Plus, download it, and license it.
Summary
This tutorial walks you through the steps of downloading, installing, and licensing ArcGIS Desktop 10.x, which includes ArcMap, using a Single Use License.
This is a guide to installing and running Tableau Desktop on your personal computer. Please note that all computers in the Map and Data Library (on the fifth floor of Robarts) and in the computer labs on the fourth and fifth floors of Robarts Library already have Tableau Desktop installed.
This tutorial provides an overview of the Online version of ArcGIS, one of ESRI's many mapping tools.
ArcGIS Online is a complete, scalable and secure software-as-a-service cloud-based mapping platform which can be used to make and share maps.
This tutorial is an introduction to Piktochart, a popular online tool used to create infographics. This exercise will illustrate some infographic design principles and specific features of Piktochart to create an infographic about comparing housing in Vancouver vs Toronto.