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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 One of the many niches that the digital humanities has carved for itself is representing historical documents through a digital medium specifically by placing historical information on maps.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.