Thanks to Zhenya Nalywayko & Brett Palmer, Penn Libraries interns, for their work on this guide.
Penn Libraries provides access to easy-to-use tools for creating maps from data, without GIS experience.
These resources are free to Penn users; to get the benefit of the Penn subscription, they should be accessed through the library homepage or Penn research guides. This guide will show you how to choose the tool that is right for you and to make maps with simple exercises that demonstrate their powerful features.
Social Explorer | PolicyMap | SimplyAnalytics | |
---|---|---|---|
Emphasis | Demography and historical census data | Social policy | Marketing data and projections |
Census/American Community Survey | 1790-2018 | 2000-2018 | 2000-2018 |
Other Data | US elections, religion, crime, and health Data; World Development Indicators, Canadian Census, European Statistics, UK Census, Ireland Religion | Housing, lending, health, workforce | NielsenPRIZM, sales, including projections |
Export Formats | Image, Powerpoint, Excel, CSV | PDF, PNG, CSV | PNG, JPEG, SVG, PDF, Shapefile |
Geographies | For Decennial Census/American Community Survey: census geographies. For other data, varies by data set. | Varies by data set. | Census, zip code, congressional district. |