Through this project, the Department of Geosciences provides equipment that enables it to teach a new technique that permits the timely, inexpensive publication of highquality color geologic maps and ancillary data as stand-alone programs on the desktop computer. This technique results in a Dynamic Digital Map (DDM) Template, a hypermedia-based map and data presentation manager. DDMs are made using a hypermedia authoring environment, by inserting digital maps and data into a DDM Template, designed for this use. The first DDM has been published by the Geological Society of America in its first venture into hypermedia-based digital map publication; it has been used with great success in a Petrology course. Another, the Dynamic Digital Geologic Map of New Englald, is used in a Physical Geology course to preview an all-day field trip across the Appalachian Mountains (it includes maps, text, QuickTime Movies, animated block diagrams and digital photos, many of which are oblique aerial, all accessible by point-and-click). Numerous similar publications (some underway, one completed) are anticipated; the ease of use of these maps and their capability to transmit large amounts of linked data accurately, and at several different levels of user sophistication, make it possible to stimulate the interest and general education of the public in geosciences.
