Back last autumn, we announced on this list the new JISC funding for the
Old Maps Online portal for historical maps, and asked librarians to
contribute metadata to the portal so that we could provide access to their
collections.
The aim of the project is to make digital map libraries accessible to
wider audiences, and especially to people interested in the history of
places rather than the history of map making, by letting them find maps by
location rather than by conventional author/title/publisher information.
http://www.oldmapsonline.org
The portal has now been running since the end of February, and currently
provides access to seven map collections:
A Vision of Britain through Time (our own collection at Portsmouth)
British Library
David Rumsey Collection (US)
Moravian Library (Czech Republic)
National Library of Scotland
New York Public Library
Retromap (Russia)
We have just received metadata from the Harvard map library, and are in
discussions with several other map libraries in the US, Europe and
elsewhere.
We are very conscious that the project is funded by UK tax payers. Given
that all the maps in the portal can be accessed via the "World Wide" web,
those tax payers are getting access to maps regardless of where they are
held (as can anyone else on the planet, as the portal is completely open
access).
However, we still want to include more UK collections. In general,
inclusion requires three kinds of information from the library who hold
the map and present it on their web site:
(1) Standard cataloguing information, including a title
(2) The URL at which the individual map can be viewed online
(3) The real world coordinates of the corners of the map
("geo-referencing")
If your library includes online images of maps from your collection, (1)
and (2) should be easy to supply, but most libraries don't do (3) ...
SO IF YOU HAVE SOME MAPS ONLINE AND WOULD LIKE THEM TO BE ACCESSIBLE FROM
THE PORTAL, JUST SEND US (1) AND (2) AND WE WILL CREATE (3) FOR YOU.
Inevitably, there are a couple of conditions on this offer: it is only to
UK libraries, even then there is a limit to how many maps we can
geo-reference, and you still need to meet our other requirements for
inclusion: mainly, that the maps must be freely, directly and fairly
reliably accessible online, without payment or passwords.
"Sending us (1) and (2)" basically means a spreadsheet with your usual
cataloguing information in columns, with an additional column containing
each map's URL. NB while the portal needs to hold geographical
coordinates, there is no need for you to hold the map in special
geo-spatial software -- we expect you to be using standard image viewers
like Zoomify, MrSid or IIPImage.
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
About everywhere: www.oldmapsonline.org
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