collaborations: Integrating partnerships,

Worldwide use of GIS is dominated by business, industry, government, and large academic institu-tions.!e U.S. Department of Labor estimated the market for GIS-related technologies expanded from $5 billion in 2001 to $30 billion in 2005. Yet outside of this “Big GIS ” stands the rest of the world, and those who have traditionally not had access to mapping and GIS tools are creating new fields of participatory and community GIS.!ese new fields apply mapping to varied problems in diverse communities throughout the world, raising the fundamental question, “How does GIS affect the ways in which communities are able to build awareness of their surroundings, develop consensus, and argue persuasively for a better future? ” (Goodchild 2002). Liberal arts colleges, many with close ties to their surrounding communities and a strong desire to be active participants in making their communities better, seem ideally suited to engage in com-munity GIS and community mapping projects.!e types and scopes of these projects vary widely, but many have a common goal: to build collaboration between community groups and colleges and address issues of mutual concern. Community GIS, then, is a viable, relevant, and important means for liberal arts colleges to apply GIS and to engage with their community. Traditionally, participatory GIS or community mapping has roots in local interventions. One strand began primarily in rural areas of the developing world as participatory ethnographic work, a means of encoding “local knowledge ” and empowering local populations in response to govern-ment and business initiatives (Peluso 1995; Kwaku Kyem 2002). Another strand can be found in bioregionalism, an approach to planning and empowerment based on defining natural and human regions and understanding the relations of environment and human activities in those regions. Mapping specific areas, and their myriad human and environmental phenomena, is a primary Mapping campus–communit