Dr Katrina Grant, Power Institute, The University of Sydney
This is not meant to be an exhaustive list, it is one based on the research I do and my students do. I try to check links regularly but some may be broken, sorry! Also sometimes tutorials go out-of-date as software is upgraded or changed or no longer free. Most things are free and open source as this is aimed at people who want to self-teach and experiment. The readings are aimed more at the general audience end of maps, but there are a few specialist texts in there too. Comments are open so feel free to leave me further suggestions.
Again, not an exhaustive list, I put these together for some students. Comments welcome.
Network analysis
Network analysis is often used in conjunction with geospatial analysis as it can provide analytical insight into the significance of locations and individuals and give a statistical confirmation of patterns seen in the visualizations created by geospatial analysis. For more information, see the Programming Historian lesson on creating network diagrams. ↩
Map Projection
Understanding the basics of map projection is useful as you start to make more sophisticated maps, especially if you are working with georeferencing. The following is a useful guide, but I also recommend talking to any friendly geographers you can find.
https://kartoweb.itc.nl/geometrics/Map%20projections/mappro.html
Axonomnetric
‘bird’s-eye view’
Isometric is a method for visually representing three-dimensional objects in two dimensions in technical and engineering drawings. It is an axonometric projection in which the three coordinate axes appear equally foreshortened and the angle between any two of them is 120 degrees.
map, planimetric
Map that presents only the horizontal positions for features represented. distinguished from a topographic map by the omission of relief in measurable form. The features usually shown on a planimetric map include rivers, lakes, and seas; mountains, valleys, and plains; forests, and prairies; cities, farms transportation routes, and public utility facilities; and political and private boundary lines. A planimetric map intended for special use may present only those features essential to the purpose to be served.
Choropleth
choropleth map is a thematic map in which areas are shaded or patterned in proportion to the measurement of the statistical variable being displayed on the map, such as population density or per-capita income.
http://www.datavizcatalogue.com/methods/choropleth.html
Ichnographic map
A type of plan defined by Vitruvius. Comes from architecture and is defined as a ground plan of the work, i.e. the geometrical projection or horizontal section representing the plan of any building, taken at such a level as to show the outer walls, with the doorways, windows, fireplaces, etc., and the correct thickness of the walls; the position of piers, columns or pilasters, courtyards and other features which constitute the design, as to scale. Also used in 15/16/17 centuries for city plans.
Surveying
What methods used to create the map. Land surveying? Aerial surveying? How were coasts observed? Are elements copied over from earlier maps?
Visualising historic maps
The digital facsimiles of maps when looked at online, or added as layers could be considered as a way of ‘visualising’, like ‘visualising’ data the digital copy and its display online is a form of interpretation.
50 words - Indigenous Languages
Mapping Aboriginal Melbourne This interactive map reveals something of Aboriginal peoples’ deep connection to this Country, the City of Melbourne, and significant events and experiences since colonisation.
Ferraris map of the Netherlands
https://www.kbr.be/en/the-ferraris-map/
Mapping Little Ice Age https://weather-extremes-in-englands-little-ice-age-westernu.hub.arcgis.com/
Melbourne Suburb Name origins https://philam.github.io/melbournesuburbnames/language.html https://maps.philipmallis.com/melbourne-suburb-names-etymology/
https://kimihia-te-matangaro.gitlab.io/mahere/
A map of lighthouses
https://geodienst.github.io/lighthousemap/
NY Public Library
https://hyperallergic.com/371841/nypl-navigates-to-another-time-and-place/
Digital Map of the Ancient World
https://digitalmapsoftheancientworld.com/
Slave Revolt in Jamaica, 1760-1761: Animated thematic map narrates the spatial history of the greatest slave insurrection in the eighteenth century British Empire.
Decima (historic census data and maps in Florence) https://decima-map.net/ A map of that has embedded data from historical Census records for Renaissance Florence. The DECIMA mapping tool presents an expansive aerial view of the city that can be easily navigated like other online mapping tools.
Hypercities: Historical layers of city spaces in an interactive, hypermedia environment.
Mapping the Republic of Letters: Interactive maps of the dissemination and the criticism of ideas, the spread of political news, and the circulation of people and objects.
Nolli Map Project The 1748 Map of Rome, by Giambattista Nolli is widely regarded by scholars as one of the most important historical documents of the city ever created. Recently updated and hosted by Stanford
Mapping the Trade of the Société Typographique de Neuchâtel, 1769-1794 FBTEE: The French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe. This project is a digital humanities project of international significance mapping the production, marketing, dissemination, policing, and reception of books (and hence ideas) in the late eighteenth century.
Mapping artists of Paris
http://www.artistsinparis.org/
Joan Blaeu - Maps from the Atlas Maior
https://metabotnik.com/projects/594/
Pamela Fletcher - London Gallery Project
http://learn.bowdoin.edu/fletcher/london-gallery/
Racial dot map
https://demographics.coopercenter.org/racial-dot-map
Atlantic Slave Trade in 2 minutes
Norse World
https://norseworld.nordiska.uu.se/index.php
Everything sings
https://placesjournal.org/article/everything-sings-maps-for-a-narrative-atlas/
3D Venice
Time Machine Project (not just maps but place-based)
Printed Cities
http://www.printedcities.com/cosmographers.html
http://openprintstudio.com/wiki/doku.php/mapping_print_project
Open Print Studio
http://openprintstudio.com/wiki/doku.php?id=start
Layered maps of Rome (project by Universita Roma Tre)
http://www.dipsuwebgis.uniroma3.it/gamma_1/index.phtml
Narrative maps from narrative slab
http://slab.scripts.mit.edu/wp/maps/narrative-maps/
DC Water Atlas
https://www.doaks.org/resources/d-c-water-atlas
Saga Map (mapping myth)
US census studies poverty map
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/upshot/maps-neighborhoods-shape-child-poverty.html
Mapping gender equity/inequity
US map of white supremacy violence
http://www.monroeworktoday.org/explore/
Lynching in America
https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org/explore
Mapping Darwin’s journey (just a very basic map but a good example of how to enrich a map and a text)
https://blog.oup.com/2017/04/charles-darwin-beagle-expedition/
Queering the map
Crowdsourced map that invites users to add personal stories and build wueer histories of place.
https://www.queeringthemap.com/
Story Map of the Palatine Wedding of 1613
http://www.taylor-poleskey.net/jutr.html
A journal of the plague year (using Omeka)
https://covid-19archive.org/s/archive/page/team
Mapwarper - a free online tool for georeferencing maps. It does a solid job and agreta place to start understanding the process (and a useful teaching tool).
QGIS (a full GIS suite but free and open source for PC and Mac, will work best on machines with decent memory and graphics cards. Steeper learning curve but more powerful once you have a handle on it. Lots of tutorials online, for example if you want to try georeferencing in QGIS and then making map tiles try this process http://www.qgistutorials.com/en/docs/georeferencing_basics.html to get a georectified TIFF image.
Mukurto Mukurtu (MOOK-oo-too) is a grassroots project aiming to empower communities to manage, share, narrate, and exchange their digital heritage in culturally relevant and ethically-minded ways.
Leaflet - this is a standard tool for building web maps. It uses Open Street Map rather than Google and is free. You will need a place to host your web map (try GitHub pages).
Google maps and Google Earth - these are free and open up to a point, but be aware if you want to embed and host maps with google it can start to cost.
Storymap (JS) excellent for telling the story of a journey or exploring spatial relationships between objects, moments, histories. Need a google sign in.
https://storymap.knightlab.com/
Juxtapose (create sliders for photos, maps, etc to compare images of the same place across different times - or other creative uses!) Need a google sign in.
https://juxtapose.knightlab.com/
Maps with Timelines - TimeMapper http://timemapper.okfnlabs.org/
Pelagios and Recogito - initially aimed at classical studies but with a broader application, great for anyone working with texts that are place-based.
See also Building the Roman Empire Vector Tile Map (vectors v rasters)
http://commons.pelagios.org/2017/11/building-the-roman-empire-vector-tile-map/
Open Refine - a great tools for organising, cleaning and editing data (alternative to excel or google sheets, with very different functionality) http://openrefine.org/
How to use it https://github.com/OpenRefine/OpenRefine/wiki/User-Guide
HERE XYZ
Create interactive maps faster and manage your geospatial data using a web app, command line interface and RESTful API.
Metabonik
Create super zoomable images - not just for maps but useful
https://metabotnik.com/help/about
A great place to start using any new digital tools for historical, collections and other humanities-focused research is the programming historian. The lessons are peer reviewed and walk the user through step-by-step. Most (but not all) are focused on using tools that are free and open.
The Programming Historian mapping lessons
https://programminghistorian.org/en/lessons/?topic=mapping
An Easy Way to Map Data in R with Plotly
http://www.briansarnacki.com/an-easy-way-to-map-data-in-r-with-plotly/
Tutorials and explanations of georectification
http://lincolnmullen.com/projects/spatial-workshop/georectification.html
Georeferencing in ArcGIS (ARcGIS is not free but some institutions will have a license)
Tool for quick batch geocoding (ie assigning lat/long coordinates to place names or addresses) https://www.doogal.co.uk/BatchGeocoding.php
Depicting Routes and Itineraries (This tutorial will show you how to show routes and itineraries on a QGIS map) http://transnationalhistory.net/mapping/tutorials/depicting-routes/
Reading an old map AI style
http://jeffblackadar.ca/uncategorized/reading-an-old-map-ai-style/
I have mainly linked to open access texts but a few may be behind paywalls (but are really important reads). These are texts on digital maps, reports on projects and some writing on mapping more generally. Presented in no particular order.
Four questions to ask when you see a map of the coronavirus pandemic
Using maps as a weapon to resist extractive industries on Indigenous territories
Geographies of the Holocaust (project with the United States Holocaust Museum)
Architecture and Maps, Databases and Archives: An Approach to Institutional History and the Built Environment in Nazi Germany http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/dah_jaskot_knowles/
These Are the Books You Must Read About Maps
https://www.wired.com/2013/08/map-book-list/
Ian Gregory Historical GIS ( a classic text on the use of GIS in historical research)
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=I_HhhJF5Un4C&dq=historical+maps+gis&lr=&source=gbs_navlinks_s
Mapping Literature: Visualisation of Spatial Uncertainty in Fiction
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/1743277411Y.0000000023
China crackdown on maps sparks major production delays
The Geography of the Odyssey
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/geography-odyssey
Mappings Intelligent Agents
https://placesjournal.org/article/mappings-intelligent-agents/
The battle for territory in digital cartography
Enabling complex analysis of large-scale digital collections: humanities research, high-performance computing, and transforming access to British Library digital collections
https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqx020
Beyond humanities qua digital: Spatial and material development for digital research infrastructures in HumlabX
https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqx008
Origins of maps
http://www.asor.org/anetoday/2018/06/Origins-of-Maps
Not all maps lead to google
Allure of the map
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-allure-of-the-map
Useful video describing basics of digitised historical maps from National Library Scotland
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpYMlSsbXIQ
Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS are Changing Historical Scholarship, Anne Kelly Knowles, Amy Hillier (2008)
On maps and the humanities - issues - Johanna Drucker
http://au.pcmag.com/csiro/37599/feature/humanising-maps-an-interview-with-johanna-drucker
Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display
http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/5/1/000091/000091.html
News stories on maps
Made up places and costly mistakes: a history of unfortunate maps – in pictures
Minecraft's my Nirvana. I found it hard, it's hard to find. Oh well, whatever... Never Mined
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/05/23/column_may/
Obviously the maps you want will depend on your project, but if you are looking for maps to experiment with or to teach yourself new methods the following are useful places to start.
National Library of Australia Maps collection page
https://www.nla.gov.au/maps/using-the-maps-collection#contact-us
NY Public Library ‘Maps by Decade’
http://spacetime.nypl.org/maps-by-decade/#/
ACT historic plans
http://app.actmapi.act.gov.au/actmapi/index.html?viewer=hp
David Rumsey historic map and georeferencing tool
http://davidrumsey.georeferencer.com/maps/194999621710/georeference
Historical GIS data links
http://library.stanford.edu/rumsey/map-research/historical-gis-data
http://library.stanford.edu/guides/finding-rare-maps-online
Tinker is an Australian-based platform for helping researchers choose digital tools. It is probably a bit more focused on long term research projects, but there is some useful information there.
Miriam Posner’s list
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Z-14hgZPMIiAzT6vx1mVg5l60zkRVU9EHgZgK9HHdU4/edit
NYU Libraries list
https://guides.nyu.edu/dighum/tools