With success in the Map It! Program, the Map Library is aiming its sights on its next venture: a mobile app.

The app will be a map of trees, or an arboretum map, and will serve as a way to locate trees on campus.

“If you were interested you could walk around campus and in theory take pictures of a certain tree and it would give you the GPS location of where the tree is located and a brief description about that tree,” said Michael Hawkins, a resident librarian.

The app will be mostly student-created, but will also be a collaboration with Davey Tree company and the grounds crew.

“We are doing the actual creation part of it and they’re going to be adding the data of all the trees and information about them,” Hawkins said.

According to Hawkins, the app came about when a geography class and the grounds crew started working on mapping out drainage points across campus for when the grounds crew needed to access them.

The library’s Map It! Program is in collaboration with the geography department that takes faculty research and helps to visualize it on a map.

Work will begin on the arboretum app at the end of this semester, with a goal launch date sometime in the fall. The app will be free to all students on campus.

The app idea follows the recognition of Kent State as a Tree Campus USA school for the ninth straight year.

If it works well, Hawkins said they may be able to do more with the Kent State map in the future.

“Right now it is in the planning stages,” Hawkins said. “It’s definitely the coolest and most interactive project we have done.”

Paige Brown is the libraries reporter, contact her at [email protected]