Last week, my boss asked me to figure out how to create a custom Google map for our university. I have no experience with developing Google maps so I've been doing some serious Google-ing trying to figure out where to begin, but I feel like I'm not getting anywhere. I've looked at the Google API developer docs. I've Googled everything I can think of. But I just don't know how to start this project.

I want to create something like the University of Washington's beautiful campus map. I've been researching custom image overlays, but all of the tutorials I found assume that I already have an image to overlay on a Google map. I do not. The only image our campus has is a geographically-inaccurate four-year-old PDF that is missing new buildings. It is not practical for me to overlay this on a Google map. I've also been playing with the 'My Places' maps in Google Maps, trying to draw some of the buildings as polygons. But this seems like a very messy way of approaching such a large campus. Not to mention the fact that many of the articles I've read about KML warn that mapping too many things with KML can cause the Google map to load slowly. I've also been trying to use Mapmaker, adding some of the campus buildings that are missing from Google maps, but they seem to be stuck in 'pending' mode.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I should approach this project? Should I do a custom overlay? If so, what is the best way to create the custom tiles (since I do not have an accurate map to overlay)? Does anyone know how to begin creating a map like the University of Washington's? I would really appreciate any help you can give. Thank you.