The Hidden Jewel of COGS - The W. K. Morrison Special Collection Presenter: Martha Bostwick, Centre of Geographic Sciences, NSCC The W. K. Morrison Special Collection is a mixed media print collection of historical maps, atlases, periodicals and books that is focused on the early mapping of Atlantic Canada and specifically Nova Scotia. It was donated to the Centre of Geographic Sciences (NSCC) by Walter Morrison, Cartographer Emeritus of COGS who was interested in antique maps as an illustration of the evolution of map making technology. There are over 2000 items in the print collection; and we are actively creating a digital archive of the collection available at bit.ly/COGSmaps.
Updating the USGS Historical Topo Map Explorer Presenter: Aileen Buckley, Esri In 2014, the US Geological Survey (USGS) and Esri collaborated to bring the ever-increasing collection of US historical topographic maps to everyone through the USGS Historical Topographic Map Explorer. This app brings to life more than 178,000 maps dating from 1884 to 2006. Users can explore the historical maps, save the current view as a web map, and download the maps as high-resolution georeferenced images. In 2019, we updated the map collection and the app. A new workflow allows newly scanned USGS maps to be added to the online collection, and updates to the app provide users with more functionality.
Primary source immersion program: teaching with maps Presenter: Theresa Quill, Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Libraries hosts a three-day Primary Source Immersion Program (PSIP) for instructors, to help them integrate primary sources into courses and demonstrate ways to foster students' information literacy skills. PISP draws on the rich collections of IU Libraries, including map collections. Participants have integrated maps and spatial/visual literacy exercises into a variety of courses, including Conflict Simulation, Military Leadership, and GIS. This talk gives examples of successful librarian-instructor partnerships as well as exercises to integrate spatial thinking and primary sources (maps!) into diverse disciplinary settings.
Opening access to historical urban atlases of Boston Presenter: Belle Lipton, Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library The Boston Public Library (BPL) has a collection of 267 urban atlases of Massachusetts. These 19th and 20th century fire insurance and real estate atlases are high-resolution, often block level depictions of neighborhoods dating back to the 1860s. The BPL is working on a project to digitize, georeference, stitch together, and publish these resources as seamless tiled map services, which will be offered in a web map interface, making the discovery of these indispensable resources much easier. This talk will highlight the library's process for creating map services out of digitized historical maps.
Unlocking Troves of Data From Historical Print Maps: Feature Extraction Through an Object-Based Classification Approach Presenter: Delphine Khanna, Pennsylvania State University Historical paper maps contain troves of data about the past, related to topography, environmental dynamics, human demographics, and more. This presentation reports on how to unlock that paper-bound information and turn it into geospatial data. Beyond the traditional approach of manual digitization, recent progress has been made to extract features semi-automatically using object-based image classification, a technique most commonly applied to satellite imagery and LiDAR data analysis. Our research proposes a workflow relying on that approach to extract features from Soviet military maps from the 1930's for a region of Belarus.
Navigating a difficult dataset to build a spatial narrative of ice sheet retreat Presenter: Henry Haro, University of Washington - Tacoma Creating a visual representation of the recession of the Cordilleran ice sheet in the Pacific Northwest required the acquisition and custom organization of a large, troublesome dataset. This talk discusses the workflow and scripts created to download, move and manipulate this data. This will include the structure of automation utilizing Python and interactive cartographic design. The presentation will show the process of transforming the data from many small, individual coverages to a desired, larger extent – and into a visual form that communicates the critical points of the historic, environmental process.
