A to Z GIS: An Illustrated Dictionary of Geographic Information Systems

I found this book useful while studying for exams and oral examinations during my Masters program. The thing to remember is this is a ESRI book and uses their terminology. If you are a student I would recommend this book to use a reference. The book isn't going to teach you GIS, it is meant to be used as a reference. So I would still buy the required books for your class.

I've been studying GIS for a few months now on my own, and have often been stuck as to the meaning of a word. For me this is a very good little book, but it did not even mention some of the projections that are popular in my country, like the Lambert projections. I am not going to give this book a low mark just for that, because I did pick up a lot of useful information in a very efficient way. If you want to go about it the long way get the Geographic Information Systems and Science but you might fall asleep in the process (it's a good book though!!). The explanations of general computer science concepts like object oriented programming are very introductory, and I would go to the Wikipedia for more detail after if I didnt know the meanings. So I'll probably give it 5 stars when a second edition comes out. Still, for the money it's a definite winner, and it's very enjoyable read.

Have you rummaged through a GIS textbook for half an hour looking for a simple definition, never to find it? Have you wondered why a $100 "introductory" textbook has loads of extraneous information but not a simple glossary, or how it can be written so obtusely and still get past an editing staff? Well, this is the Allen Iverson of GIS books, "The Answer." It gives you GIS concepts clearly and succinctly, with great explanatory illustrations for the "visual learners" out there, which are many in geography I would think. This has been a "go to" book for me in GIS but also in Remote Sensing; there's no question whether to get it, only how much the bookstore will pay you to buy back that unused textbook that you blew $100 on.

Books about GIS are usually quite technical, surveying the applications and computer potentials of geographic information systems, so it's refreshing to note that A TO Z GIS: AN ILLUSTRATED DICTIONARY OF GEOGEPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS is something different: a simple set of geography and cartography definitions designed to defines values, coordinates, reference systems, representations, and GIS data processing methods and routines. Students of GIS will find this essential to understanding the terminology of both computer and geography worlds. Diane C. Donovan California Bookwatch