January 26, 2022 – Academic Digital History
For the first assigned blog post of this semester I chose to take a look at the “Old Maps Online” site as I have had the pleasure of using this site for a previous class that I have taken.
Old Maps Online is a public history project and useful search engine for historical maps. This project aims to demonstrate the tools available for publishing historical maps with a focus on easy accessibility for the general public. The site was developed as a collaboration between Klokan Technologies GmbH, Switzerland and The Great Britain Historical GIS Project in January of 2013. The Old Maps Online Project is currently maintained by volunteers as well as the Klokan Technologies team.
The homepage on this site is rather simple but still relatively easy to use and understand. The users eyes are immediately drawn to the large buttons in the middle of the page which enable the user to either find a place or browse the old maps that are available. This feature is incredibly useful as it makes the process of finding old maps easier for those who do not know where to start. By clicking on the “Find a Place” button, the user is greeted with a pleasant animation which pushes aside the two buttons and reveals a search bar. If the user knows of the place they wish to research, this tool is best for finding a map quickly and efficiently.
If the user does not know what they are looking for or where to start, the “Browse the Old Maps” button is a good solution for such a problem. Clicking on this button loads a new page featuring the users current location, featuring related maps on the left-hand side of the page. As the user zooms out on the map and searches around the world, the accessible maps update according to the location. Once the user has found a place they would like to investigate, they are able to browse the provided maps on the left-hand side of the page in which the area showcased in the old map is outlined in red on the digital version.
Sitting near the top of all pages on this site there is a small black menu bar which features a search tab, an about tab, a news tab, and a mobile tab.
The “About” tab discusses how the site came to be, as well as how the technology works and how the website is ran. On the Left-hand side of the “About” page there is a menu with options to view the terms of use, privacy and cookies, links to install widgets, and a page with instructions on how to add collections of maps to the database. The authors and volunteers have also listed the participating institutions, each containing links to their respective websites along with a brief description of the institution itself.
The Old Maps Online database is extraordinarily expansive and exceptionally valuable to the study of history. With an index of over 400,000 maps (and still growing) this digital history project offers all kinds of historians, students, and all other people access to both ancient and modern maps all over the world. Each map available on this site offers as in-depth information as possible including the date of the map, the publisher, any inscriptions or descriptions, and what collection it came from. The most valuable aspect given on this website however is the opportunity to view the maps on the collections websites, which typically contain some form of georeferencer capability. Through these websites the user has the ability to overlay the old map with a modern version. This process is also extremely valuable for researchers and students that are involved with HGIS programs as manually georeferencing can be very time-consuming (especially when other tasks are more of a priority!).
Overall, I think that the Old Maps Online academic digital history project is a very useful and valuable website. Without bringing too much bias into this blog post, this website has aided my past research tremendously and so I cannot be more grateful for this service. This digital database is relatively accessible and easy to use, and really is close to being the best thing since sliced bread!