Public – Page 4 – Digital Maps, Space and Place

October 2, 2014

Assigning Value to Davidson Buildings

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As you walk around the main quad of Davidson College it’s hard to distinguish which buildings are old, and which are new. The continuity of the architecture, with red bricks and white facing, gives the college a consistently quaint feel. Although it seems like each building has been here from the beginning, GIS can help determine which buildings actually have historical value, and which do not. Because historical value isn’t the only measure of value, I have also included my own personal value in this analysis (measured by weather or not I have been to the building).

To measure value I have georeferenced a map of Davidson College in 1915 with Mecklenburg county buildings data. I then clipped the shape file so only Davidson buildings were included. I assigned each building a value from 1-4 depending on their combined historical and personal value. Buildings with a value of 4 have been there since 1915 and I have visited them. Buildings with a value of 3 have not been there since 1915 but I have visited them. Buildings with a value of 2 have been there since 1915 and I have not visited them. Finally, buildings with a value of 1 have not been there since 1915 and I have not visited them.

The above image shows the effectiveness of Davidson College planning. Of all of the buildings, only two have no historical value or value to me. Although I do not accurately represent all Davidson Students, I have been here for four years, so hopefully visited more buildings than not. Using GIS I show that the main campus of Davidson College is highly populated and contains many buildings with high levels of value. It would be interesting to compare this map to a similar map of the newly acquired areas of Davidson’s campus. It would also be interesting to map these measures of value of different students involved in different areas around campus. These maps might show us weather or not Davidson is designed effectively for the diversity of students. The historical map demonstrates how Davidson has managed to keep numerous buildings that are frequently visited (renovated or not) for 100 years.

Here is the map with google maps as a background

September 26, 2014

The library – where could it have been?

Davidson College has a long history of book collecting, but the Little Library is a relatively new addition to the campus landscape. Over the years, college libraries have been housed in the Old Chambers building, Phi and Eu halls, in the Carnegie guest house (which was once a Carnegie library) and in Sloan. The Little Library of today was built in 1974, but not before considerable debate over where it should be located.

Chambers library_05 — Critiques of Library locations – courtesy of Davidson College Archives

One of the artifacts of this debate is this map of possible library sites. Each was accompanied by a list of pros and cons. Location one – south of the President’s house and the guest house, was “near dorms and classrooms” but might “necessitate the removal [of] good trees.” Location two – just north of the current location – would “crowd Duke & East dorms.” Location three, despite “good access from [the] road” was both “too far from dorms and classrooms” and “would cause removal of Jackson Court.” Other locations were too far from classrooms, and one – directly across Concord road from campus “present[ed] road crossing problem for students.” The committee went on to note that “solution of tunnel or bridge could be expensive.”

Given how much the campus has expanded since then, the thought of a bridge over or tunnel under Concord is a bit laughable, but it’s interesting to imagine what life on campus might have been like – and how we might have used space differently – had the library been placed somewhere else.

Possible future library map.

September 26, 2014

Maptiler+ Davidson in 1969

I had very similar issues with Maptiler when compared to my classmates (particularly Joe). It is very simple- there are only a few pages to click through making it far less intimidating than QGIS. In fact, I thought the entire process would be super simple based on how simple it was getting to the page where I was forced to do the overlapping. Before I could get to that page, I realized that I would have to rely on a googlemap image of davidson college. This image did not fit well with the map I chose, although I had high hopes. My map is too wide making everything a bit off of scale. When I finally found the best overview shot, and was ready to lay my map over, I realized I’d have to rely more on my map directory to understand how much the campus has changed since 1969. A lot of the buildings were moved, some changed names and new ones were built. This narrowed my reference points down to Belk, Chambers, Duke, Baker Drive and Concord road. When I finally, was ready to have my map rendered I was immediately disappointed at how different the two maps were. I played around with adding new points and tried my best to make the existing choices very precise but, my best map still isn’t a perfect overlay.

I think that the Maptiler can improve by having a few tools to help manipulate the overlay map especially if it is meant to fit a googlemap image. Because googlemap images can be as close or as far as the user wants, being able to rotate, cut and reshape the image that is being overlayed will significantly improve the precision. When I tried adding nearly 7 points, I became frustrated at how distorted my map became, making it impossible to understand. Finding the middle road would be the best, and that falls on the user to decide how many points to use. 3 is too little and 7 is too many.

https://54ab69828fac3cefb7996d0a0a971b8d58d0c923.googledrive.com/host/0Bzi_ze1VzfJbd2NmSkxJb1lidU0/

September 26, 2014

Map Tiler Review + Davidson 60's Map Overlay

Map Folder

Map Tiler’s Interface is very user friendly at the beginning. The addition of points to match up with the given map is very intuitive. However, the map result can encounter noticeable problems if the map picture is not entirely to scale. For example, many of the buildings on Davidson campus to not match up with their counterparts on the two maps in relation to the streets. In addition, if a map is fairly un-detailed in a certain area, or simply lacks easily identifiable points for detail, the map will generally be very skewed, even if there are many points in a clustered area. Roads are the best point of reference, I’ve found, as they often have very clear intersections. They are also much less subject to distortion than buildings, which can have very many differences in scale between the two maps.

The other issue with the program is the fact that the output system can be a little confusing. It seems one has to devote an entire separate folder to the rendering files or the program will become confused. I would have rather the system create a folder in the destination file rather than just simply putting each file in the folder (or on the desktop) individually.

However, once one gets accustomed to the quirks, Map Tiler is very straightforward and simple to use. It gives a very good product for very little effort and can be easily taught to just about any level of user with minimal guidance.

September 26, 2014

The Benefits of Warped Maps – Using MapTiler to Geocode

Attempt 1: https://33d8b2c24eb605307ea0635c48868382a9c76f54.googledrive.com/host/0B3qWZoVoqkj0OTlOaGJJb0ZSNjg/

**for attempt 1 the map doesn’t show the first time but if you reload the page it usually shows.

Attempt 2:

https://fde27f0d66c1f67b7b15ffe8436a7c6284d9733d.googledrive.com/host/0B3qWZoVoqkj0bjRJMkxzNHNoOWM/

Geocoding this map using MapTiler demonstrated a couple of challenges of map geocoding. In class we discussed the overwhelming amount of map data available for urban places, and the underwhelming amount available for rural ones. My geocoding experience presents tangible evidence of this phenomena. In my first attempt of geocoding this historical map of Davidson College and its surrounding areas the historical map fit nicely in the areas of Davidson with roads and buildings (bottom right), but was warped tremendously in the surrounding natural areas (at the top). Although Davidson College is not quite an urban center, the differences between the inhabited and uninhabited areas are striking. Without roads or buildings it is very hard to geocode a map. It took me a second try to guess where areas in the historical map corresponded to google maps for the northern part of Davidson’s property, and still my second attempt is not quite perfect. While this small experiment shows that the differences in information for rural versus urban landscapes is quite stark, it also shows that historical mapping processes can inform current map makers of the past human-environment relationships.

Using geocoding as a tool, it would be interesting to measure the “warpness” of historical maps as Davidson college expands into nature. By mapping a series of historical maps on a current google map and viewing the areas being warped, one could distinguish the areas in which the College expands into the surrounding natural area. Do they map the natural areas or leave them sparse? How quickly does the college expand its infrastructure? Is there a way to remove all of the warp in these historical maps? These results could show not only the expansion of the college, but also the fluctuations of valued spaces.

What at first seemed to be a mistake, might just demonstrate one of the benefits of geocoding techniques. By showing warp, MapTiler allows for map makers to develop certain theories about historical maps – in this case about Davidson College’s relationship with the surrounding land.

September 26, 2014

Spotting the Difference with MapTiler

While projects in the digital humanities range from thick mapping data onto Maps, such as Hyper Cities, to reinterpreting social interactions through mobile devices, such as location-based social networks described by Adriana de Souza Silva and Jordan Frith in Mobile Stories, all employ a unique digital medium that is tailored to best convey the message. One of the many niches that the digital humanities has carved for itself is representing historical documents through a digital medium specifically by placing historical information on maps. For example, in this link, a physical map of Davidson College’s campus from 1978 has been layered on top of Google Maps using MapTiler.

By placing this piece of Davidson history in the context of an immediately understandable satellite image, the viewer is fluidly transported from 2014 to 1978 and vice versa. In addition to helping the user understand the context of the map, MapTiler includes a slider that adjusts the image’s transparency and affords the viewer the opportunity to compare Davidson’s campus from the past to the present and see how new and old buildings are spatially aligned. As can be seen in this map, which represents an even older version of Davidson’s campus, the campus of Davidson College has changed dramatically: Chambers has burned and been rebuilt, dorms and sports fields have been added, and the library has been relocated a number of times.

MapTiler allows the user to attach geographic coordinates to a map and spatially situate images on top of satellite images. From a humanities standpoint, MapTiler provides a useful way to place a historical image in its current context; from a user’s standpoint, MapTiler makes this humanities project a simple undertaking. With this user-friendly tool, adding raster images (like the older map of Davidson’s campus) over Google Maps is as easy as dropping matching points onto each image, uploading the file to a host server, and using the tool to spot the difference between different images and time periods.

September 26, 2014

A College that Grows: 1939 and Now

Link to the geocoded map of Davidson from 1939/1940

I took an image of a map of Davidson College from 1939-1940 and used MapTiler to mark points on this map that corresponded with a current cartographic view of Davidson College similar to what someone would see in Google Maps. While geocoding, I only found it to be a challenge when a building on one side didn’t correspond to a building on the old map of Davidson College. I wasn’t sure if this would skew my results, but it turned out the way that I hoped it would. Overall, the program is very straightforward for the purposes that I was using it.

My geocoded result shows the accuracy of the traditional map as well as change over time (click on the link above and use the slider in the top right to see the differences between the two layers). The map tells the story of a growing college. Like people, the college has changed in certain ways and has remained the same in other ways as time has gone on. An example of accuracy is shown by Main Street (once called U.S Highway No. 21), which lines up almost perfectly with the Main Street in the bottom layer; Concord Road does as well. Differences include additions of dorms, academics buildings, and relocation of certain buildings such as the fraternities (currently in Patterson Court but once in Jackson Court-bottom right of old map). The most noticeable consistency is Chambers (large building in the center) as well as the paths on campus, which we can only see through the top layer since the trees in the bottom layer block our view.

The story that the map is telling isn’t limited to just showing position change of buildings, but we can speculate as to why certain buildings moved. For example, the library used to be far from Chambers (top left building on top layer map), but now it is located right behind Chambers. This position change shows clustering of academic buildings, which the college currently does. The increase of population accounts for additional dormitories, expanding the campus, and possibly moving the fraternities to Patterson Court so that the faculty could have Jackson Court. These two observations lead me to a realization from this ‘story in the form of a map’: necessity brings change, and change is made possible by money (we might even be able to say that potential needs arise when the money is there).

With this information, I could use a map like this in the future to estimate trends of how the campus might evolve. Obviously, Chambers will most likely remain where it is; it is the Sun while other buildings are planets that can enter an orbit from Chamber’s ‘gravitational pull’. Furthermore, people determine what is necessary to change, which means that the layout of Davidson College is very much a social construct. People are predictable, so the evolution of Davidson College should be as well.

September 12, 2014

Sound of Street View Review

My first thought was: limited scope. There is a limited view of the park, and the sounds replay. This is more of a technological issue. However, I will say that this can easily be enhanced by adding an element of time. Because public spaces like the Buckingham Fountain can be used by a variety of people throughout the day, the types of sounds will change. The noises that are highlighted will changebecause the fountain’s visitors change. I think that people discredit the amount of change even a park bench can go through in one day due to the diversity of its users. The scale could be a little larger in order to place the view in perspective for the viewer. I really only use street view to visualize where I am going, not to explore one space. Street view to me is a tool for the directionaly-impared like myself who need visuals to know where they’re going. To just see a park with a fountain gives me no context about its location in the city, the size of the park or the different features of the park. I essentially am clicking right or left like a guess-and-check game where I’m not sure where I am going or where I am.

When I tried to make sense of how to improve this map-style using the guidelines of Monmonier I was even more confused. Monmonier states that if you are highlighting differences in climate a projection with straight, parallel lines is needed. If however, you are highlighting time of day, straight line meridians are important instead. I think that both a comparative look of the space during different seasons and different times of day would be helpful to a viewer. What is this park like during a summer day? What is like during a fall night? It doesn’t have to be specific like ‘what is this park like during Christmastime’ although, that would be interesting to see as well. This is all to say, how does the cartographer construct these meanings in a digital, interactive, map while still looking on to the principles of Monmonier?

The best part of this sound map is that the visual is enhanced by hearing sounds that an average viewer would here on any given day. It is relatively user-friendly by enabling familiar street-view icons that someone might recognize from Google. Ahhh Google: the all-knowing,all-powerful mapper. It is clear from “Mapping the Empire” that some maps (*cough* Google) have the power to essentially eliminate the thought of human existence wherever they so please, I don’t think the lack of information that I am critical of with Sounds of Street View is born out of the same agenda. I think there is a clear oversight into the amount of fluidity a public space can have at any given moment. When we limit the view to only the sunny daytime in Chicago, where you see and hear, cheerful noises, you leave the rest to the imagination of the viewer. When you have no pictures or streetviews for a township in South Africa with families and human lives you send a message to the reader that the place is desolate and not worth imagining.

September 12, 2014

Photogrammar: A Better Way to Digitize Collections

The website Photogrammar, a digital collection of 170,000 photographs from the Farm Security Administration–Office of War Information, provides an excellent example for publishing a large digitized photograph collection and making it easy for the public to use. Additionally, the site offers unique insights into the data by presenting the collection as a digital map. For those who are interested in presenting a collection similar to Photogrammar, refer to The Look section below for information about the format of this website; for those interested in United States history and the digital humanities, refer to The Information.

The Look

A team of historians, statisticians, digital media and technology experts from Yale University turned a collection of old photographs into the digital humanities project, Photogrammar, and created a website that is clean, easy and fun to use. The main page streamlines the data into three options: an abstract about the history of the collection, a map that compresses the collection and organizes it by state and year, and an interactive feature that lets you explore the photographs from California in depth and search photographs via a subject of interest. With the first tab, About the Collection, the user can read an informative synopsis of the history of the collection. Having a separate tab for textual information makes the entire site more aesthetically pleasing and allows the visual aspects of the website to stand out. With the second tab, Interactive Map, the user can manipulate the presentation of the collection and organize it by a shaded map that indicates the number of photographs per county or a dotted map that indicates the location of particular photographers. Additionally, the map includes a slide feature that allows the user to select specific time periods for when the photographs were taken. The third tab, Photogrammer Labs, allows the user to explore subject headings and sub-headings of photographs using Treemap (for example, the category of ‘Work’ can be narrowed down to the specific sub-heading ‘Maple,’ which contains around fifty photographs of maple tree harvesting) and offers a way to analyze the photographs in California by photographer, topic, year and location using the Metadata Dashboard.

The website is unique because of the variety of ways that the user can sort through the collection: by date, by photographer, by location, and by subject. It is also unique in its accessibility; it does not organize the photographs by words but by visuals, such as the Interactive Map and the Treemap. My only complaint is that once you choose either a location (through the Interactive Map) or a subject (through Treemap) the site does not let you organize the photographs further. For example, once the subject category of ‘Husbands and Wives’ is selected, the photographs in that sub-heading cannot be sorted further by location, photographer or date. However, overall, the Photogrammar provides a useful access point and allows the user to sift through the photographs more precisely using the aforementioned visual search functions.

The Information

The pictures featured on this website document the era of United States history between the years 1935 and 1945 and record the relief work projects that occurred from the time of the Great Depression to WWII. In addition to organizing the photographs in the collection, I believe that Photogrammar uses the collection to create an entirely new entities like the Interactive Map. Like Stephen Ramsay and Geoffrey Rockwell argue in ’Developing Things: Notes Towards an Epistemology of Building in the Digital Humanities, the technology of the digital humanities is an act of scholarship and can itself become an argument or theory. In the case of Photogrammar, the website is a prototype for how digital collections should be organized and is an argument for what about a photography collection is important, namely, the photographer, location, date and subject of the photographs. Additionally, Photogrammar engages in thick mapping, which HyperCities defines as “collecting, aggregating, and visualizing ever more layers of geographic or place-specific data,” by placing categorical information about the photographs on top of a map of the United States and making a new entity that is an extension of the original collection. As an example of thick mapping, the layers of data in the Interactive Map add not only space-specific data (i.e. where the photograph was taken) but also time-specific data (i.e. when it was taken). In conclusion, the website does not merely organize photographic media sources, it builds a new media source with thick-map layering and organizational arguments.

In the terms of the representing the narratives of each picture, Photogrammar falls short by leaving the photographs to tell the narrative of this federal government project by themselves. As briefly summarized in the About the Collection, the federal government sponsored the widespread photography project featured on this website in order to introduce America to Americans and the spread support for the New Deal relief programs; thus, the entirety of this collecting is intended to highlight poverty and the effectiveness of work programs. As Nedra Reynolds point outs, all maps are made by subjective authors and are not accurate mirrors of reality; similarly, the photographs in the collection and the entire digital project of Photogrammar must be qualified by the subjective views of the photographers and creators. Despite the fact that the interface Photogrammar does not tell the complete story of these photographs, it remains a useful tool for researchers interested in the period and a good platform for others to use as an example for a digital collection.

This graphic shows the ‘Photographer’ option for the Interactive Map.

The Metadata Dashboard for California can be seen in the graphic above.

September 12, 2014

Digital Cartography Review: Photogrammar

Photogrammar is a digital cartography project that maps upwards of 170,000 photos taken by photographers for the United States Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information between 1935 to 1945. This ‘Great Depression to World War II’ time period has given birth to some of the most recognizable photographs in United States history. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the map comes to us from a team at Yale University.

The counties are highlighted with in green. The darker green represents a county with more photos. http://photogrammar.yale.edu/map/ — Photographs by county. The counties are highlighted in green. The darker green represents a county with more photos. http://photogrammar.yale.edu/map/

The map is easy to navigate with a straightforward narrative, which I address below. Progressing forward isn’t so much of a journey that the user would feel discouraged to back out and select another location. The visual aspects of the map give a sense of technological success without feeling intimidating. The user literally receives a visual of the past in a way that is familiar (use of a map) yet completely different than traditional ways of studying history.

This project clearly states two things due to how we must interact with the map. It argues that photography is an important way to document history, and the best way to look at these pictures is by location. The location or space has meaning because of the particular event or action captured in the photograph. There are two ways to view the map: by county (as shown above); darker green counties contain larger amounts of photographs, or by photographer; each photographer has a colored dot assigned to them in a particular county. On top of that, the user can narrow change the timeframe, search for a picture, and even view a classification tree of the photographs in the Labs section. In chapter 2 of Mobile Stories Brett Oppegaard and Dene Grigar talk about a narrative structure that “functions as a basic cognitive means of organizing human experience and making sense of it…” (Oppegaard and Grigar, 28). Photogrammar successfully carries out this narrative structure defined by Oppegaard and Grigar.

The interactive map looks like a Mercator style projection. Even though this style makes Alaska, which is not shown in the above picture due to the initial zoom of the map when the page opens, look much larger than the continental United States, I feel that this projection is suitable for this type of project. The intent of the map isn’t to show the correct proportions of the states, but instead, it’s intent is to show the prevalence of images that define United States history during this particular time period. Off of that point, this project would agree with Henri Lefebvre’s idea in “The Production of Space” that space is constructed by what people put there and by how people think of what is in the space (Lefebvre, 12-13). These images convey a message about people and space during this time period.

Furthermore, this project shows the uniqueness of digitizing information. The user can jump from year to year and location to location to see into the past. In “Geographies of Writing: Inhabiting Places and Encountering Difference”, Nedra Reynolds mentions that technology is helpful, yet is distances us from our own mental map because we come to rely on it too much (Reynolds, 82). I know that Reynolds is specifically referring to certain situations when she proposed her idea, but I would counter-argue that a map like Photogrammar does the exact opposite of distancing us; it allows us to connect locations that are important to us with images that are important in history.

I am impressed with the statement that this project gives to the user as well as how the user receives this statement; the ease of use due to simple actions and familiarity makes this an effective tool. Users ranging from middle school students to historians could find this map valuable. I would combine the Labs section with the actual map rather than having them separate; I don’t think it would be too much of an extra layer considering that the current layers of the map are few.