Subject Guides: GIS and Mapping: Learning GIS

Books

Many books, including e-books, are available through the Mardigian Library to help you learn GIS. Search the library catalog for:

• geographic information systems (subject search)
• "geospatial analysis" (keyword search)
• "spatial data" (keyword search)
• cartography (subject search)
• ArcGIS (subject search)
• QGIS (keyword search)

Online training

Online training can be found through various sources. If you are stuck on how to do one particular task, check YouTube. You can also find GIS and cartography courses. Here are some examples:

U-M's Teaching and Technology Collaborative
A free, multi-day event held annually the first full week of May for faculty, staff and students. Each session is about 1¹/₂ hour long and is usually repeated during the event.
LinkedIn Learning
Provides video tutorials for using ArcGIS and QGIS, as well as general GIS topics.
ESRI
Free online classes that are four to six weeks long. A certificate is available upon completion.
Coursera
Offers MOOCs that can be audited for free.
MIT OpenCourseWare
Freely browse and use MIT OpenCourseWare materials at your own pace. There's no signup, and no start or end dates. Includes GIS courses and tutorials.
Open Textbook Library
Includes textbooks that can be viewed online or downloaded for free, iincluding Essentials of Geographic Information Systems (©:2011).
OPEN.ED@PSU
Open courseware in GIS from Penn State University.

GIS Certificate (UM-Dearborn)

If you really want to learn more about GIS, consider UM-Dearborn's Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Certificate. See the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Certificate website for more information.