Over the past thirty years, a revolution, spurred by technological innovation and driven by the importance placed on spatial analysis, has prompted a paradigm shift in the mapping world. Individuals once unable to participate in the map making process find themselves with the technology, if not the cartographic knowledge, to map whatever phenomena they desire. With this democratization of mapping comes a larger community of map makers and increased production and consumption of poorly designed maps and public perception of what a well-designed map is. To fight the trend of poorly designed maps, map makers must be educated in cartography and cartographic design. This research focuses on the combination of a map ontology, automatic theme identification through data mining, and a cartographic expert system to provide multiple starting points for taking the democratization of mapping to the next level: the democratization of cartography.