A group of us are putting together a proposal to JISC for funding to build
a search portal through which users can access as many geo-referenced
images of historical maps as possible, regardless of which library holds
them.

The portal will not hold any maps, only data about what maps exist, what
areas they cover, and the URL you need to access them, so users will click
through to the relevant library site to view them.

If funded, we aim to have a first version of the portal running early next
year, covering the National Library of Scotland's collection, the David
Rumsey Collection and my own GB Historical GIS/Vision of Britain historic
map library. During 2012 we would be adding maps that will be
geo-referenced by a new project at the British Library. The search
interface will be based on MapRankSearch, developed by Klokan Technologies
and currently used by the Rumsey Collection.

However, we would like to include additional collections, so we are
looking for libraries who can supply us with suitable metadata they
already have, or will have by December 2012. We cannot pay you for this,
but we don't have any daft ideas about charging map libraries
subscriptions, and this should lead to more use of your web site.

WE ARE ALSO INTERESTED IN WORKING WITH ONE OR TWO LIBRARIES WHO HAVE
SUBSTANTIAL DIGITAL MAP COLLECTIONS THAT ARE _NOT_ ALREADY GEO-REFERENCED.
Under this JISC scheme, the funding cannot be used to scan paper maps, but
it CAN be used to improve the metadata on existing digital collections,
and that certainly includes adding geo-referencing, and creating
appropriate delivery mechanisms that the portal could refer users to. The
collaborations we have in mind would involve our staff working to set up
for you the open source software we ourselves use.

WHAT YOU NEED TO HAVE:

-- AN EXISTING COLLECTION OF SCANNED IMAGES OF HISTORICAL MAPS, with
standard non-spatial cataloguing (MARC/Dublin Core compliant).

-- A REALISTIC PLAN FOR MAKING THE MAPS AVAILABLE LONG TERM. The funding
requires that the results be available on-line until the end of June 2018.
Keeping the portal going until then would be our problem, but keeping the
maps available would be yours (NB no particular financial penalty if you
don't, but a black mark in some ledger ...)

-- A SERVER WE CAN WORK WITH. We would not be expecting you to discard
your current cataloguing system or web site, but you would need to run
some software you do not currently use, which we would set up. This will
not cost you any money, but it will probably work better if your web site
already runs other "open source" software, like Linux and Apache. If your
web site is based on Microsoft Windows and Internet Information Server,
your organisation will probably be more comfortable running Arc Internet
Map Server --- at least until you discover what it will cost.

The portal will be about providing users looking for maps of a particular
area and period with fairly instant gratification: they will search by
placename or specify an area via a bounding rectangle, possibly specify a
historical period, and get back a list of maps with hyperlinks; clicking
on a link will take them straight to an image of the map on your site. We
are therefore interested only in maps that have already been scanned, and
which will be available on-line. The geo-referencing does not have to be
precise, we just need a bounding box indicating the area it covers. The
maps can be of anywhere in the world. The portal will be open access
rather than access controlled via Shibboleth, and we hope the maps will be
too.

There is in fact another component of the project, which is about
improving the actual URLs used to access on-line historic maps. At
present, they are long-winded and baffling to non-techies, but their worst
fault is that they contain bits (like ".asp" and ".jsp") which are tied to
the particular technology used to serve the maps, and therefore very
unlikely to carry on working long-term. The reason I personally am
interested in this project is that I do not think that historical GIS
builders and other historians creating on-line interpretative resources
should be building their own digital map libraries, but we need the
digital collections created by map librarians to be findable by historians
who have no interest in the history of surveyors and map publishers; even
more importantly they need to be reliably citable; and that includes
sometimes being able to digitally cite, i.e. directly hyperlink to not
just map images but specific locations within those images.

TIMETABLE. JISC schemes run on brisk timetables, and this idea has evolved
a lot, so apologies for the short notice: the deadline for applications is
Monday August 15th, and to include you in the proposal we need letters of
support by noon on Thursday 11th (scans or PDFs sent as attachments to
[log in to unmask]). However, holiday plans etc mean we need to
discuss this with you THIS WEEK, i.e. by Friday 5th. We will hear the
outcome by the end of September. If the project is funded, it starts
November 1st and runs until January 31st 2013. I will be at the Map
Curators' Group workshop in York on September 7th, and interested in
discussing this, but of course that is after the proposal is submitted.

Hoping to hear from you.

Humphrey Southall


Dr Humphrey Southall
Reader in Geography/Director, GB Historical GIS,
Dept of Geography, University of Portsmouth,
Buckingham Building, Lion Terrace,
Portsmouth PO1 3HE, UK

GBHGIS Office: 023 9284 2500
Direct line: 023 9284 2497
About us: www.port.ac.uk/research/gbhgis
About Britain: www.visionofbritain.org.uk