Just another My blog Sites site
It’s not possible to export these, but it’s a cool resource for georectifying old maps: http://www.bl.uk/maps/georeferencingmap.html
There’s a lot of free, open source and ready-to-use data out there. Here’s a collection of data about New York City:
https://nycopendata.socrata.com/
Here’s a link to the map I created (or, depending on when you read this – will create) in class today: Davidson 1837
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.
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.
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 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.
Stanford’s Spatial History Project asks us an important question: Is conservation for the land or for the species? In their report, Peers and Santos look at the development of “open spaces” in relation to when endangered species are discovered and the spaces they truly occupy. Peers and Santos define open spaces as including ecological preserves, national parks, and protected parks, among many other areas that support California’s natural biodiversity. Through their charts and interactive map, Peers and Santos argue that there is a disconnect between land that has been designated as open spaces and the discovery of threatened and endangered (T&E) species and that many T&E species lie outside these open spaces even contemporarily
One of the merits of this project is its overall clarity in its message. Through the charts and the digital map, it is very easy to see the disconnect between open space acquisition and T&E species. The map itself makes wonderful use of the digital medium by displaying the gradual acquisition of land as open spaces and where T&E species are discovered over time. The digital maps allows a much clearer visual representation than the graphs alone do. The graphs are limited to define species as either inside or outside open spaces, but the map can show the viewer just how little the general acquisition of land matches up with the placement of T&E species. Viewers can see how much of the overlap in many of the earlier decades seems almost random and can see hot-spots of T&E species that are ignored.
The data here could be very useful for those wishing to address concerns about the processes that are used to acquire land to be designated as an open space, particularly at the state and federal levels. In addition, the projects opens the floor for other questions to be asked and researched. Do other states or areas in other countries have similar disconnects? What are the governing influences on land acquisition if not focused on the acquisition of land where T&E species reside? A layman could easily understand the data presented here and be intrigued by such questions, and the project does a good job of informing anyone who comes across it of the situation, with or without an extensive academic background on the subject. It definitely speaks to the argument that “The particular contribution of the digital humanities, however, lies in its exploration of the difference that the digital can make to the kinds of work that we do as well as to the ways that we communicate with one another” (Fitzpatrick). The use of the digital medium allows something that could have been presented without taking advantage of digital tools be much more concise and clear.
The map itself, while very informative, has a few issues that should be addressed. Firstly, the map is centered on a graph showing the T&E species that are either inside or outside open spaces. This is information that has already been presented to us in the various graphs of the report and draws attention from the new information presented in the geographic map of California. Additionally, the map does not account for much of the uncertainty in the data. In the “About” section, Peers and Santos note that some of the data listed general locations of T&E species as opposed to specific ones, yet this uncertainty is not referenced on the visual graphic in any way. Reuschel and Hurni’s “Mapping Literature: Visualization of Spatial Uncertainty in Fiction,” speaks very much to the importance of identifying such uncertainty to help remove any author bias and includes several methods of doing so which certainly would not be out of the question for this particular graphic. A final note is that even though the urban areas box is checked off from the opening of the interactive map, the city names are still displayed. However, after clicking the graphic to add or remove urban areas, the city names are only displayed if the box is checked. While the concept of allowing the viewer to choose whether or not to include city names overcomes the issue of the need of distortion to display everything clearly (Monmonier 23), if the cities and urban area definitions are to be separate at one point, they should remain separate as the incongruity can be confusing.
However, the importance and clarity of this project is not to be overlooked. I would suggest it to be viewed by anyone, but especially with those interested in improving land conservation or those who might be intrigued in finding out motivations as to why the particular land was acquired from a more economic standpoint.
In their project, “Critical Habitat: A Spatial History of Extinction and Reintroduction”, Jon Christensen and Gabriel Shields-Estrada address the environmental changes overtime in a small a California Grassland. They specifically examine the failed conservation strategies for a species of butterfly and map the historical conservation efforts that, despite their good intentions, ended up hurting the butterfly population and driving it towards extinction. In line with Guldi’s argument on Spatial Turn, Christensen and Shields-Estrada use digital maps as a new tool for addressing an old question – “re-examine the 20th century narrative of the transformation of California’s grasslands and how that history shaped modern conservation” (Christensen and Shields Estrada).
Christensen and Shields-Estrada visually take the reader through a population history of the area. By combining interactive maps and graphical figures, they place their work in conversation with LeFevre’s argument about the objectivity of maps. LeFevre argues that maps can not be completely objective, and this project demonstrates that although these maps seem to be depicting biological facts (somewhat objective), the juxtaposition of map and graph (below), presents a strong subjective argument.
This image depicts the authors argument that as grazing lands decrease, more butterfly extinctions occur. This type of mapping represents a new spin on thick-mapping explained in Hypercities. While Christensen and Shields only provide two layers on their actual map (area and extinction status), coupling the map with an interactive graph allows for even more layers – time, land status, and a land-status/extinction rate relationship. The two interactive map/graph figures in this project provide the most substance and the strongest arguments. They are visually pleasing, easy to use and understand, and digital for a reason. They further the authors arguments that physical changes in the landscape, especially the introduction of parks, protected areas, and new developments, is correlated with the demise in butterfly populations. While this argument may or may not be correct, the authors use maps to present it in a clear way.
While Jon Christensen and Gabriel Shields-Estrada present a clear and significant case for the importance of environmental mapping when examining previous population trends, their final product lacks in several areas. In their introduction, the authors stated that they would use “18th and 19th century data sources to re-examine the 20th century narrative of the transformation of California’s grasslands and how that history shaped modern conservation”, but none of their final products present any data before 1960. In terms of graphing, the two impressive visualizations are bold and influential, but they lack in interactiveness. A reader simply presses play and watches history unfold. If there was a way to zoom in on a particular place, the authors would introduce a new level of scale that would make their maps more interactive and engaging. Additionally they graph the changes in land use, but including this on a map would allow for their argument on the interconnectedness of land use change and population status to visually thrive.
Overall Christensen and Shields-Estrada use maps to examine a previous phenomena that will aid in future conservation decisions. Their use of maps to answer historical questions as well as provide future solutions is refreshing and strong, and brings justification to Geographic Representation as an area of study.
Here’s an interesting discussion of the differences between Google and Open Street map, as well as some thoughts on crowdsourced cartography: http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2014/09/google-mug-maker.html
Good afternoon all – in advance of our meeting about Davidson maps tomorrow, I thought I’d share the map I threw together this summer, which simply overlays the official campus map over a google satelite map: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/45996750/Office_map2/index.html
The fader in the top right-hand corner changes the opacity of the campus map, and the whole thing is zoomable. We’re going to be doing similar things with other campus maps (or perhaps with the maps you drew yesterday) so I thought it might be helpful for you to see the first step in that process.
Also remember that we’re meeting in front of the library tomorrow, in advance of our trip to the archives.