Google held a contest to encourage students to help populate its rendition of the Earth with three-dimensional building models. Dartmouth’s team was one of the winners (The Dartmouth; news release) and the models have since been placed on the globe for all to see.

The news release explains Dartmouth’s extra attention to history and suggests an eventual grand global GIS:

The Dartmouth team went a step beyond the contest’s expectations to create three separate timelines, 1800, 1900 and 2007, to illustrate how the campus has grown and changed. With input from the Office of Planning, Design & Construction, accompanying material for each building explains when it was built, what it’s used for, who the architect was, and when it was renovated.

Second Life already contains a superb downtown Hanover; someone must be thinking about putting it into Google Earth.