The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) yesterday (26 Oct 2011)
announced a number of new project grants:

http://digitisation.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2011/10/26/winning-projects-jisc-con
tent-call-0611

The list includes:

"Old Maps Online: Finding and referencing historical mapping as a platform
for research and teaching, Humphrey Southall, Portsmouth University,
£139,900"

For once, this project is not about making the Vision of Britain web site
even bigger, or in any way expanding the map collection within it.
Although I am the grant holder, the project involves a lot of map
librarians and that was partly organised through this list -- for which
many thanks (librarians who supplied letters of support will be hearing
shortly from Paula Aucott).

So what are we going to be doing?

The aim of the project, and of the JISC call we were responding to, is not
to add to the stock of digital content but to make the existing stock
easier to access and use -- and everyone know that existing map catalogues
are not that helpful to existing users because most users want maps based
not on who drew them, what the title is or even which library holds them,
but on what places the maps cover.

Our project will be creating a federated search portal which includes, in
principle, as many maps and map libraries as possible, and lets users find
maps by place name or by clicking on a map of the world. Having your
collection included in the portal will not cost you anything, but there
are definitely conditions attached:

(1) The project is about scanned images of maps, not paper maps.

(2) We need you to supply us with copies of your catalogue information,
and allow us to publish it (but there is no need to transfer copyright in
that information, or to supply actual images).

(3) The metadata for the maps needs to include real world coordinates for
the corners.

(4) You need to make the scanned images of the maps freely, directly and
fairly reliably available online. We don't expect libraries, as distinct
from individual researchers, will have problems with the "FAIRLY reliably"
bit, but this also means that everybody on the web must be able to VIEW
your images online, without payment or passwords (download facilities are
not our concern); so the metadata need to also include a URL at which each
map is viewable.

We cannot help you with scanning maps or computerising your catalogue. We
can certainly help you with advice on how to do (3) and (4), including
open source software solutions, and for selected collections we will be
doing some actual geo-referencing work. In general, we expect you to
supply metadata "as is", and that we will have to do some work to fit it
into our system, including transforming the coordinates you hold.

Unlike some earlier portal projects, we are leaving it entirely up to
libraries how they actually present maps to users, but note that there is
no need for your image-serving software to have any geospatial
capabilities, that will be handled by the portal (on the other hand, maps
tend to be a bit big to simply view on screen so some ability to zoom and
pan is helpful ...). Because we will be providing portal users with direct
links to individual maps, some libraries may want to make it easier to
move "up" from a map to the rest of their site.

TIMETABLE AND LAUNCH

We have funding for 15 months starting 1st November, and if most of that
time was going to be spent developing portal software we would not have
much impact. Instead, we will be basing the portal closely on the MapRank
Search software already developed by Klokan Technologies and in use by the
David Rumsey Collection (Petr Pridal, who runs Klokan, is a key partner
and much of this is his vision):

  http://www.davidrumsey.com/view/maprank-search

That approach will enable us to launch an initial version of the portal
quickly: we aim to demonstrate it at two public meetings in February, at
the New York Public Library on the 25th and University of London Senate
House on the 29th, and to have it available for public use fairly soon
after (sorry to be a bit vague about those meetings, but they need
separate announcements by other people -- you will hear more!). At that
stage, the portal will probably look VERY like the Rumsey system, and the
content may be limited to the National Library of Scotland's digital
collection, my own project's, and the Rumsey Collection.

Although the project funding runs only to 31st January 2013, the portal
will then be kept running for at least another five years.

AND THERE'S MORE ...

-- JISC will see this project as a success only if it boosts overall use
of digital map libraries, not just making life easier for existing users.
We don't have an advertising budget (government policy ...), and we hope
libraries will assist us in promoting the portal. We will not be
publicising the project to end users until we have a working
demonstration. 

-- A substantial part of the project is not about making online maps
easier to find but easier to cite, notably including systematic
referencing from online GIS systems and historical gazetteers. This means
making the URLs used to access maps simpler and more persistent (i.e. less
dependent on the particular server software currently used: a Uniform
Resource Identifier identifying the map library plus a persistent ID for
the map, like an accession number, should be sufficient). We hope that
libraries will want to engage with this part of our agenda, but that will
not be a condition for inclusion in the portal. More about this later.

-- We expect the work to assemble the map metadata will be pretty manual,
at our end and yours. This is not because we think this is preferable to
automated harvesting, but because map libraries are mostly based within
larger libraries and we think that progress on automated harvesting
depends on wider initiatives, not on anything we can do. Obviously, we are
concerned that those broader initiatives allow for the possibility that
library metadata include spatial coordinates as well as the Dublin Core
element set ...

-- and just to be clear, we are interested in including maps of anywhere
in the world, held by libraries anywhere in the world, so long as they
meet the above conditions.
Best wishes,

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