Q: Why doesn’t my department or office appear on the map?
A: The map displays buildings by their physical address, not the multiple offices, departments, schools, institutes, laboratories, and colleges inside them. The map is used to find buildings; you can search for and find campus units in the A-Z List or in the Illinois Directory.
While a handful of buildings are linked to a specific campus unit, most campus buildings share classroom, administrative, or research space with a multitude of other campus units, making it impossible to link most buildings to a specific campus unit. Imagine, for instance, how long the list would be if every college and department that used Foellinger Hall or Lincoln Hall was listed, or how many times the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences or the College of Engineering or ACES would appear in the various pop-up windows for individual campus buildings. The sheer number of campus units and the frequency of relocation makes it impossible to track and update manually.
On Sept. 13, 2013, the "schools" point of interest layer was enabled in the Google map API, which allowed the location of departments and schools taken from the data provided by Google MapMaker to appear next to the scholarly cap icon on the base map provided by Google. Public Affairs does not support changes or corrections in location for departments, schools and colleges, as the data is crowd-sourced using Google MapMaker. Departments, schools and colleges that wish to indicate or change their locations must do so themselves within the Google MapMaker application.
Q: The building I’m looking for appears in the building index and in search results, and an outline of the building appears on the Google-provided base map, but the building name doesn't appear on the base map.
A: Google uses a mathematical formula to determine what building labels appear at what level of zoom. This is used to make it easier to read the map when there are many buildings clustered closely together. Try zooming in. If the name of the building doesn't appear on the Google-provided base map at the highest level of zoom, please contact Public Affairs. We'll examine the entry for the building in Google MapMaker and edit it to resolve the issue, if possible. Note that building names always appear in the Web Services-provided layer, and are shown by searching for the building, using the pull-down menu, or by clicking on the building.
Q: Why is my building listed by its street address in the building index and in search results?
A: Public Affairs uses the official Facilities & Services database for building names and addresses, which refers to some buildings by the street address, and not by a name. Public Affairs, for instance, is located in 507 East Green Street - along with at least four other units. If you think the building should be referred to by a name instead of an address, you should follow the naming process described in the Campus Administrative Manual.
Q: Why does a building appear in the building index of the desktop version, but not in the mobile version?
A: The number of buildings appearing in the pull-down index in the mobile version are reduced to avoid long scroll windows in the mobile version. All buildings still appear in the search results in the mobile version.
Q: I thought this building was an animal research facility and according to campus policy should not appear - why is it on the Google base map?
A: We live in an era of ubiquitous information. Anyone with a GIS-enabled cellphone and a connection to the Web can identify buildings and their locations. Via Google Map Maker, everyone now can enter relevant data on Google’s base map. That data is reviewed and edited by others participating in the Map Maker project. Public Affairs does not identify the buildings in the searchable campus maps index, but the building outlines may appear on the base map provided by Google. Images of individual buildings appear on the aerial photography provided to Google by the Champaign County GIS Consortium or other Google partner organizations.
Q: What criteria is used to determine whether to include a building in the building index and search results?
A: The building must be owned by the university, or be private property leased to the university and occupied by a campus unit. Privately owned buildings may appear on the Google-provided base map, but are not included in the building index or search results.
Q: Why doesn’t a building appear in the search index? It's owned by the university and/or it's private property leased to the university and occupied by a campus unit.
A: Some campus buildings, including utility and telecommunications buildings, some laboratory animal holding facilities and some research facilities do not appear per campus policy. Faculty and staff that have reasons why a building should or should not be viewed by the public should review the campus policy and then contact Public Affairs.
Q: Something isn’t right on the base map. Why don’t you just call Google and make them change it?
Google handles edits to its base maps much the same way Wikipedia handles edits to its entries — it's crowd-sourced. Individual editors build up a reputation (represented via algorithm) based on how good (or bad) the information is that they provide, and editors and reviewers update the information — that way there's no overhead for Google, but also no customer service whatsoever. Edits to Google’s base map are handled by other Google Map Maker editors and reviewers according to their own time schedule. There’s no way to hurry the process along.
Q: I want to use the campus map in my student project. Where do I request map data?
A: See the forms at the bottom of this page in the Campus Administrative Manual.
Data Sources
Public Affairs manages data related to locations and in which categories the buildings appear. Facilities & Services provides building names, addresses, accessibility information and building images that appear in the pop-up windows. Only buildings owned by the campus or private buildings where the campus rents office space appear within the building index or in search results. Google provides the names of the buildings that appear on the base map.