As already announced on this list, the GB Historical GIS Project are
working on an extended version of their system, which will be made
generally available via an enhanced version of their Vision of
Britain site to be launched in the spring of 2009.
Although the extensions are mainly funded by the Higher Education
Funding Councils, via the Joint Information Systems Committee, we are
planning to base the new system on the extended architecture we have
developed with European Union funding. This means the system will
include historic boundaries for Sweden and Estonia, plus national
boundaries for the rest of Europe, but we are also plan to include at
least one set of scanned background maps for Europe.
We have been using British government maps from the 1940s, in the
GSGS 4072 series,and are extremely grateful to Liverpool University
for loaning their copies for scanning. However, presumably because
these maps were produced during the second world war and there were
areas of Europe not involved in the war, there are two areas which
were never covered by GSGS 4072: northern Sweden, and the whole of
Finland. Within Sweden, the maps give out just south of the city of
Sundsvall (irritating, because our Swedish collaborators are based in
Sundsvall and in Umea which is even further north!).
We are therefore trying to find other maps which we can graft on to
cover these gaps. They should be at 1:500,000 scale or fairly
similar, they should be maps primarily of landscape features, not
political boundaries, and they MUST be out of copyright. A sample of
the GSGS 4072 maps, for the area around Zurich, is on-line here to
give an idea of what we need:
http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/images/sample_ww2_map.jpg
The "out of copyright" part really matters, as we are aiming to open
up our web map server so that other people's web sites can also use
our base maps. One of the main reasons why this technology has not
taken off is a lack of content that can be made freely available.
Please make suggestions of suitable maps even if you do not have copies.
With thanks,
Humphrey Southall
====================================
Humphrey Southall
Reader in Geography/Director,
Great Britain Historical GIS Project
Department of Geography, University of Portsmouth
Buckingham Building, Lion Terrace, Portsmouth PO1 3HE
GIS Project Office: (023) 9284 2500
Home office: (020) 8853 0396
Mobile: 0796 808 5454
About Britain: http://www.VisionOfBritain.org.uk
About us: http://www.gbhgis.org
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