Tutorials and Learning Resources

The Harvard Map Collection maintains a series of guides and tutorials geared towards helping you with your GIS projects. These guides have been created based on Harvard community needs. Each one was written to respond to real questions from other Harvard researchers.

At the Map Collection, we advise on all GIS data and software. We do, however, write our guides for use with the free, open-source desktop tool QGIS. QGIS works for all operating systems, and supports data work aligned with open science standards.

If you have any questions that are not answered on this page, please do not hesitate to get in touch

Software Access

  • ArcGIS Pro Access at Harvard - This guide demonstrates how to access ArcGIS Pro at Harvard, including on your own computer, and various workstations on campus.
  • Download QGIS - This guide covers how to download the free and open-source desktop GIS program, QGIS.

QGIS Hub

  • Add a Basemap in QGIS - This tutorial covers how to add a basemap to a project. Basemaps let you have cartographic reference data that can serve as a backdrop to the datasets you are working with, to contextualize them in their proper geographic location.
  • Manage Coordinate Reference Systems in QGIS - This guide explains the concept of coordinate reference systems. Coordinate reference systems underpin geospatial technology and are what allow data layers to appear in real-world location. Knowing the basics of how they operate within the software can help with common troubleshooting issues.
  • Georeference in QGIS - This is a step-by-step tutorial that covers how to georeference, or align digital scans of maps so that they become datasets that can be layered into a GIS project along with other spatial data. 
  • Add Spreadsheet Data (CSV/XLSX) to QGIS - This is a step-by-step tutorial with example spreadsheet data for how exactly to format your spreadsheets so that you can ingest them into the QGIS software as a mapping data layer.
  • Perform a table join in QGIS - This guide covers the common GIS task of joining or merging a table of data with GIS boundary files. 
  • Vectorizing from Historic Maps in QGIS - This is a step-by-step tutorial that covers how to create structured vector data for analysis and display by tracing or digitizing features from historic maps.

Data curation

Applied Projects

Visit our project gallery to browse example GIS projects from Harvard students, faculty, and researchers. 

Contact

This guide is maintained by the Harvard Map Collection. Visit our website to learn more about our services, including 1:1 appointments for project support.