With its sprawling buildings and winding roads, the Cornell campus can be confounding even for the most seasoned student. Fortunately, the University now offers an interactive map to expedite travels not only around campus but throughout Ithaca and its environs. The new map offers several views: a standard map, a satellite image with the option of highlighting roads, and a terrain map that shows the relief features of the area.
From there, users have two ways to find the locations they seek. They can either type in the place name or peruse a pull-down menu of more than 300 destinations like Cayuga Medical Center, fraternity and sorority houses, and campus buildings such as Barton Hall and Olin Library. Then a window comes up that gives the option to search for directions to the nearest metered parking or information booth; it also lets the user know what offices and programs are at each destination. The interactive map offers several other useful tools, such as a direct link to a page that lists campus road closures. It also notes the locations of such features as restrooms, diaper changing stations, bus stops, dining halls, libraries, and wellness paths.
The new map is a vast improvement over the old ones on the Cornell website, which were too large to fit on most screens, difficult to read, and slow to load.