The University of Portsmouth, the Great Britain Historical GIS team and
Klokan Technologies are pleased to announce the launch of a new web site,
Old Maps Online:
www.oldmapsonline.org
It does not itself contain any old maps, but rather the catalogues of,
currently, five map collections:
A Vision of Britain through Time
British Library
David Rumsey Collection
Moravian Library
National Library of Scotland
There are a bit over 60,000 maps accessible via Old Maps Online, and
currently they are mostly for Britain. To be included here, the maps have
to be:
-- Scanned, so this is not about paper map collections at all
-- Freely and directly accessible online
-- Geo-referenced, so we know the real-world coordinates of the corners
What this means in practice is that you can search for maps in Old Maps
Online not by the name of the author or the sheet title, but by the area
the map covers and the date. Searching is done by using a map: for a given
area, zoom into where you are interested in; want more detailed maps, zoom
in a bit more. Only want maps from the 18th century, use the timeline
sliders to narrow the focus. The home page IS the search form, and when
you go there the system can usually figure where you are located and
automatically focuses on that place. There is a form for text searches,
and by default it works as a gazetteer, letting you quickly change your
focus.
The maps that best match your area of interest are listed on the right.
Click on the thumbnail image for a pop-up with more details, and click on
the bigger thumbnail in the pop-up to go to the full image at the relevant
map library. The basic aim is immediate gratification: within a minute of
going to Old Maps Online you should be looking at a detailed map of where
you are interested in.
The site is working now, with the content described, but it is going to
grow substantially over the coming year as we add more collections to it.
Although based in the UK, and currently strongest for the UK, coverage is
global and there are already many maps for the rest of Europe.
Enjoy!
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
About everywhere: www.oldmapsonline.org
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