Impact of Digital Maps and GIS
Advantages for Historians
- New tools don’t require cartographical skills
- Ease of making
- Interactive
- Ability to filter and interrogate
- Evidence can be embedded
- Allows us to integrate sources
Problems for Historians
- It is difficult to plot imprecise data on points, lines, dots.
- Designed for different profession
- Historical data can be problematic
- Historical maps are not always mappable to current places.
- Expensive and difficult to use
- Georectification (MapWarper)
Examples
- Old NYC NYPL
- Digital Harlem
- Digital Harlem blog
- Visualizing Early Baltimore
- Place Matters. Doesn’t use a map.
- Valley of the Shadow uses place as an organizing principle.
- Map of San Francisco Earthquake used to navigate through digital objects
- Phila Place used to navigate the website
- Mapping the Republic of Letters, Stanford Spatial History Lab
- Mapping LGBQT St. Louis
- Living New Deal Map
- Pew Center Immigration Study
- Wikileaks Deaths in Iraq
- Home and Away, CNN
- Mapping Dante
- South of Union Square, Greenwich Village Historical Society
Mapping with Google Maps
Creating Maps
- Scale
- Relevant Background Data
- Choice of background map
- Symbols and colors
- Labels
- Legends
- Sources of information
Other Tools
- CartoDB
- StoryMapJS (slide show and map)
- MapBox
Historiography Groups
Identify the authors of all your selections
- Name
- Birth-Death dates
- Institutional Affiliation
- Geographical location
- Photograph available?