The sixth annual Big Ten GIS Conference is returning on April 17 for anyone interested in maps and geospatial data, “which ought to be just about everyone,” according to Colleen Wilson.

Geospatial data is information that’s tied to a specific place. So odds are, if you can think of it, there’s probably a map for it.

“Voting patterns, climate change, war, you name it,”  said Wilson, associate director of the Big Ten Academic Alliance Geospatial Information Network (BTAA-GIN). “Geospatial data helps us understand our world better.”

The GIS Conference is a free, virtual conference that began in 2020 with the goal of connecting people interested in geospatial research: students, educators, professionals, etc. “It really is for anyone and everything,” Wilson said.

It’s organized by the BTAA-GIN, a collaboration of library-affiliated staff from 17 academic libraries in the Big Ten Academic Alliance. The group formed in 2015 to share expertise and resources, support geospatial research, and create a community of geospatial library professionals.

From the beginning, the team aimed to make the conference as accessible as possible, especially for students. While some people have the resources and institutional backing to attend a four-day, in-person conference, many don’t.

“There was a gap in opportunities for students to present at conferences,” said Karen Majewicz, associate director of BTAA-GIN. “We intentionally tried to make sure this conference would be welcoming to students.”

Early iterations of the conference coincided with GIS Day, held on the third Wednesday of November, but they shifted the conference to the spring semester to give students more time to prepare and showcase their research.

Since that change, they’ve received more student proposals, and those proposals have been stronger and stronger. Last year, 43 percent of accepted presentations were from students. This year it’s 65 percent.

Nicole Scholtz, a longtime BTAA-GIN member and librarian for geospatial and numeric data at the University of Michigan, helps facilitate the Lightning Talks sessions, five rapid-fire presentations on a variety of topics from different researchers. It’s her favorite part of the conference, and for the first time this year, the conference will have an all-student Lightning Talk session, delivered by a slate of undergraduates.

As much as the conference provides opportunities for students, the team wants to connect with the broader GIS community from the Big Ten and beyond. In 2025, around 600 people registered for the conference, and many were GIS professionals from state and local governments across the country, as well as for-profit and non-profit organizations.

This year’s keynote speaker is Frank Donnelly, the head of GIS and Data Services at Brown University, who will share his work on the Data Rescue Project. In 2025, federal geospatial datasets and public data infrastructure began disappearing from government servers. In response, volunteers at the Data Rescue Project rushed to preserve over 400 data layers before it disappeared.

Other presentations will cover how spatial tools can be used in the humanities, creating 3D urban models of historical neighborhoods, the advancement of autonomous GIS tools, mapping areas vulnerable to climate change and extreme weather events, identifying food deserts and barriers to food access, and more.

Geographic Information Science (GIScience) sounds like a hard science discipline for people gifted at math, but its use goes well beyond the STEM field. The GIS Conference takes a cross-disciplinary approach and selects presentations from a wide range of topics.

“Since GIS became part of academia and universities, it’s been inherently interdisciplinary,” Majewicz said. “That’s one thing that’s cool about a conference like this, bringing people together that share an approach and method, but not necessarily the same theme or discipline.”

This year, for example, Gabrielle Skinner will present on how historical redlining affected the availability and distribution of outpatient mental health facilities in Wayne County, Michigan, or rather the absence of those resources in specific communities.

And on the other end of the spectrum, students at Wellesley College presented their liberal arts project last year, which transformed a library hallway into a large-scale map of nighttime lights on the Korean peninsula, overlaid with population density.

“It’s really energizing to see the smart questions that these folks are researching, and trying to help illuminate the challenges and opportunities, so we can solve them,” Wilson said. “I think that’s really inspiring.”

Another feature of the conference is the map gallery, an ongoing collection of interactive and static maps that highlight projects from BTAA-GIN member institutions. Last year’s maps featured an exploration of beaches in Kenosha, Wisconsin; shared urban characteristics between cities, like Minneapolis and Washington, D.C.; and an overview of community fridges and mutual aid in Chicago.

“Data visualization can be really abstract for a lot of people. But you put things on a map, folks are able to relate to it in interesting ways,” Scholtz said. “People can find themselves in maps, and that’s exciting, and it opens up the possibilities for how that impact can be felt.”

The GIS Conference and BTAA-GIN couldn’t exist without the work of libraries, particularly the University of Minnesota Libraries, which leads the initiative. For the past 10 years, the network has built and maintained an open-access geospatial data discovery portal called the BTAA Geoportal, now containing more than 100,000 records.

“All of that is made possible by having accessible, reliable data, and that is what libraries do,” Wilson said. “This conference is a direct example of why the libraries’ work is so important. The work we do undergirds the research that these folks are presenting.”

“Some of our institutions don’t have more than one or two [geospatial professionals], and even when they do, it’s so beneficial to meet together,” Scholtz added. “We’re collaborating to make something much more than we could ever do on our own. That feels so good, and it’s so much the spirit of the libraries.”