Ahoy bloggers! I failed miserably to keep up with my blog last sememster. But today is a new day and I’m thrilled to be preparing for the upcoming THATcamp un-conference.
check it out: http://thatcamp.org/
Amanda French has posted a geat topic- I’m really interested in being around for this dicussion.
http://thatcamp.org/2009/05/digital-history-across-the-curriculum/
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Time flies
So I’m in the middle of this semster and I’ve already gotten so far behind. I’ll be updating my classes and info soon, stay tuned fair travellers.
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Catching up to 2009
whew, times flies, The final project went pretty well, overall I was pleasedwiththe result. Out of this experience I realized that I am fascinated with cartography. I always loved maps and such, but thinking about maps beyond decor was something I really had not done before.
With this project, I was interested in thinking about digital cartogrpahy and battle fields. The larger question is what is the way forward? Of course in history terms, the past is never too far behind.
I just saw this today:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/01/05/germany.battlefield/index.html
very interesting.
I’ll be keeping this blog up in the future- though I’ll more than likely add new pages to correspond with the coursework.
More to come, welcome to the future.
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Presentation follow up
Thanks to all who commented on my mockups last night. I wanted to post more information about the project to address some of the areas of my grant proposal that did not get discussed in depth in my presentation.
Abstract:
Mapping the Footsteps of History is a Web 2.0 geospatial mashup tool that will allow users to interactively generate composite maps of Civil War era battlefields sites with Google Earth’s satellite imagery. It is also a digital database resource of battlefields maps, which correlate as closely to the time of the battle as possible.
This unique historical perspective will:
- create an enhanced digital then and now experience
- create a more comprehensive experience and a broader context of the battlefield
- the audience for this resource will be amateur historians, amateur cartographers, and battle enthusiasts
The grant will be proposing two things:
1) to build a database for the older maps and
2) the mapping tool itself.
Addressing the question of scaling on older maps, I have been thinking about the potential issues and the short answer is to use a process called rubber sheeting. (Rubber sheeting is the process of taking a number of control points and matching them with accurate geographic locations). Of course it would be great to try to build a geographic coordinate grid onto these older maps as I mentioned- but it is very difficult to accomplish- so rubber sheeting may work for the build out of the database.
Why is this tool needed? There does not seem to be a resource of this kind that focuses on battlefields maps. The David Ramsey collection is a great model for what the site can become. This goals for this tool is to focus on Civil War era battlefields that can be a great resource with this specific focus.
I will rework some of my mock ups based on further responses (More detailed “how to’s” on the Getting started page, changing the home page a bit to perhaps to provide clarity, and perhaps changing the Compare maps tag line to include the term U.S.)
Thanks again, I look forward to any additional thoughts or questions.
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Presentation
here is my presentation, I look forward to comments.
Website mock up PDFs- (even though they are not very clear.)
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Evolution 2.0
Ok so I’ve been working away at the design and layout, I’m in draft version number 6, I’m sure there will be some tweaks for my presentation next week, but I wanted to post my three slides that shows how my tool would work.
So here are my more detailed mockups:
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- Here is what you will see when you come to the site
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- After entering your search
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- The maps together
I look forward to getting comments.
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Mapping illness
I was very interested in Snow’s cholera map that Professor Cohen showed us in class this past week. It just so happened that this article came out discussing the Google mapping of illnesses. Heres’ the Google announcement.
More specifically, Google awarded 14 million to “…support partners working in Southeast Asia and Africa to help prevent the next pandemic. ” It is a part of the Google’s philanthropic efforts called Predict and Prevent. It seems very interesting to see how we’ve gone from Snow’s mapping of cholera, to this geo-mapping of illness. Any it is very exciting!
Check out the HealthMap.
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Shaping the vision
Here’s a real rough beginning mock up of my site that I’ve tried to transfer from my original drawing I brought to the class Jeremy taught. For this tool there are three steps.
I wanted to avoid having to do those three steps by navigating three levels down from the home page. So the idea is to have everything above the fold and easily discernable. I’m attaching my rough beginning and a rough color palette i’m thinking about. These will change and be updated throughout the week.
Here’s my rough (and I mean rough) page and palette:
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Imaging Literature
Moretti’s book is an interesting read. Not because it offers some cool ways to visualize and learn, but because it is so far from that way I learn and understand that I had to work a little harder to try to connect with it. Applying a quantitative approach to literature is an interestng and yet somewhat surprising approach.
The quantitative approach to literature can take several different forms - from copmutational styilistics to thematic databases, book history and more. (4)
His approach to book history seems to be a different element from a study of literature.It seems to me a more opportunity for analytical approach to study book history. That is to say the study of the history of the book is different, in my eyes, than literary studies. Then, what exactly are we to understand from Moretti’s book? Is it merely a tool by which we can try to visual or learning through mapping, and graphs? How can analytical analysis help better understand literature? I’m not entirely sold this idea simply because what we are ignoring is the how the beauty of language of literature creates the literary experience. Reading this book reminded me of 9th grade English and sentence diagramming. You lose something powerful that exists in the language when you create data sets of information out of these books. Is there a sense that from a quantitative analysis you can find the art within the literature as it is intended? I think Tracy has a good point here in her blog post about Google. I do not think we can find the artistry in literature by doing an analytical breakdown. Perahps I’m misunderstanding what Moretti is really talking about or perhaps my response is too strong a knee jerk reaction.
And from my reaction that really gives Moretti’s models not an ounce of support to Burke’s response. His article does a great job of slapping me back to reality, as it were. He allows for there to be a sense of finding that which could be useful in Moretti’s work. Burke asks us to look at the modeling that Moretti has done and find the usefulness of this work- and he rightly points out that there could be uses for this work- as he shows through the Sherlock Holmes example. One thing that struck me with Burke’s piece was that he points out that the weaknesses in Moretti is being able to accurately quantify the numbers and data that you are able to find. His example of the “quantifying publication” of newspapers is especially telling. What Burke does gives me an opportunity to give Moretti another look. I like that.
I read Prof. Cohens’ article with great interest as it seems to have answered one of the larger questions of my own project. After poking around on the syllabus finder, I am convinced that my project would have to go through a similar process. If I were builidng my search tool I would follow the example that Dr. Cohen puts forth – only I’d be searching for older maps not syllabi. I would want to have my map search tool that searches by “…stitching together and processing digital collections using server-to-server communications and programming algorithms.” I’m excited to think that I could possibly see how the search tools could be crated using this template.
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Focus
Some feedback I have been given thus far is that my project is not focused enough. So with that in mind I’ve decided to focus down my project to be just specific tool for creating a now and then map of battlefields keeping an eye on creating the broader ideas environment in the longer term.
I’m working on designing my mock up and I’ll post that before class tomorrow. But I’ve been looking at some sites that provide some food for thought about how I’d like to do this.
- ArcGIS
- Google Earth
- Google Maps
- Open Street Map
- Platial
- TimeMap
- Yahoo Map Mixer
- National Geographic Map Machine
- USGS
These are but a few online mapping sites that are available online. I’m sure I will find many more resources for the final grant proposal, but I think as a means to really find my own niche, this has been a helpful sampling. As I search through these sites there are some elements I like.
There are , of course elements like Digital Globe that are available for purchase. This is not what I hope to accomplish.
I really liked the GIS site and the National Geographic Map Machine site for what seems to be my ability to locate maps. But the Yahoo map mixer is just the overlay function I’m looking for-so that is closer to what I hope to do.
I’m not finding anything close to what I hope to create and that gives me a little hope in terms of being innovative with this idea for a tool. So the question is, how do I do this? My proposed solution is to create a search function from my database of maps that I’ve downloaded from, for example, The Library of Congress, and have available and then utilize, for example (though not written in stone) a satellite imagery tool such as Google Earth and then have the two maps overlayed, with a click of the mouse.
For example I can find in the Library of Congress a map form 1875 (one year before Custer’s last stand):
Little Big Horn area of Montana 1875
Followed by the google earth satellite image of the same:
Google Earth
So once we have these two set, the tool would overlay these two maps. Interestingly, finding these two maps and sizing it, took me a little over an hour. The Yahoo tool only will allow you to upload only one map to compare it to a yahoo map, I was hoping it would allow me to take the above images and overlay them- that was disappointing.
So this is where the project is, and I’m hopeful that I’m closer than I was a day ago.
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