A patron came into the map library today wanting one giant PDF that shows the 2020 census tracts of a county. Starting with Cook County, Illinois. The usual
Census website reference maps carve Cook County into 6 large PDFs - thankfully all at the same scale. His fallback plan that he wants to avoid is taking the time to slice off the margins of each sheet and forcing the PDFs together into one giant PDF file.
But he swears about a month ago he tripped across a website (which he can’t find now) that allowed him to select several sheets and the website stitched them together for him.
Does this sound familiar?
He cringes at his next county of interest, Los Angeles County, because the many PDF sheets were created at varying scales and won’t abut each other nicely at all without a whole lot of digital tomfoolery.
Thank you for considering,
Kathleen Weessies
Social Sciences Coordinator; Head, Map Library
Michigan State University
517-884-0849