BY KELLY SISSON

Ever gotten lost on campus? Surely you have a crumpled old campus map in your glove compartment, and you may even have used the online searchable campus map to find your way around the Farm. But thanks to efforts by Stanford's map gurus, navigating campus may take on added dimensions in the not too distant future.

The department of Maps and Records, tucked away behind Maples Pavilion and Bonair Siding, manages and provides all current records on the conditions of Stanford lands, buildings and infrastructure. To building managers and landscapers, construction workers and lost tourists, Stanford's 678 buildings, 300,000 linear feet of groundcover and 46 miles of roads become much more wieldy thanks to people like Kristina Seyer Smith, manager of Maps and Records.

Seyer Smith, who's been working for Maps and Records for five years and was promoted to manager last June, has been working with her staff on a number of projects that will significantly alter Stanford's spatial information systems. A year and a half ago, Maps and Records met with about 25 departments, including Environmental Health and Safety, Government Cost and Rate Studies, the Stanford Management Company, Housing and Dining Services, Communication Services and the University Architect/Planning Office.

"We interviewed the staff to see how they used spatial information and came up with a long-term plan for implementing technology that will create a shared database for all Stanford facilities and lands," Seyer Smith said.

The plan could integrate various efforts that already are under way on campus. For example, every light post, manhole cover and tree (of which there are more than 18,000) is being cataloged for input into the database for the benefit of Facilities Operations.

But the project has much greater potential, depending on the data ultimately gathered and entered into the database. Those navigating campus – be they delivery people or merely lost visitors – could, armed with a global positioning device, be guided over roads and pathways to their destination. And from their desktops, faculty and staff could obtain customized information about facilities and buildings. Already, workers are using the global positioning system to locate utility lines that have been mapped.

"This is the state-of-the-art direction that we're heading to," Seyer Smith said.

Disability access maps

With the help of the Office for Multicultural Development, work already has been done to chart disability-friendly access to campus buildings. Disabled members of the university community could, before long, be able to view these maps on their palm devices and – again, in the not too distant future – use a global positioning system device to know exactly where they are on campus.

"It was always my dream" to have such up-to-date maps for the disabled community, said Rosa Gonzalez, the university's ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliance officer. She said working with Maps and Records was "terrific, not only because of their technical expertise but because they were committed to the spirit of what we were trying to accomplish. They were really into it, which made it fun."

The project involved a lot of trial and error in coming up with the best ways to present certain features and designations on the maps so that they would be user-friendly and intuitive, she added. "I have a whole new respect for map makers," Gonzalez said.

Maps showing access points for disabled people were last done in the 1980s, she said, and they failed to reflect all the new construction on campus as well as work that had been done to older buildings to make them more accessible.

"Layered" maps

The new map data also could provide a much-needed update to the university's public web maps.

New web maps might someday permit "layers" that allow users to click on objects on the map and obtain more information -- for example, about a building's architecture or history, nearby parking lots, and perhaps even phone numbers for departments located in the building. Information about things on campus that aren't in buildings also will prove useful, such as the locations of outdoor emergency telephones, emergency assembly points and all the trees on campus.

A prototype map for Facilities Operations has such layers. "You can hover over certain things and click to go there. What this allows you to do is dynamically zoom in and out, and as you do, you get more information" from the additional layers, Seyer Smith said.

And instead of looking at an old-fashioned index, users may be able to type in the name of a building they're seeking and have the cursor automatically point right to it. Such a database could include common building nicknames, so that entering "MemChu," for example, would bring a user to Memorial Church.

Kelly Sisson is an intern with Stanford News Service.