Marin Escalera

Digital mapping is one of the latest ways to show maps in digital projects in a more interactive way for public audiences. This way of mapping fits into spatial history which is the analysis of human movement and interactions with the environment over time. Historical GIS (Geographic Information System) and deep mapping allow spatial history to come alive. Despite bringing in a new way to share maps and research, historians “were skeptical about the positivist implications baked into GIS and the requisite technical skills” (p.302) and for deep maps some scholars would question if “the interpretive revelation [is] worth the technical investment?” (p.304). Though there was much overall skepticism regarding these tools they are gradually being used in digital public history projects.

            Digital mapping allows historians to combine images and maps with text to bring together a project which is pleasing both to academics and a public audience. It also makes things more accessible to visual learners who need a visual to accompany a text. Especially when the text is about an area the reader may not be familiar with. Deep mapping also allows users to see a specific place and its change over time. This can make the evolution of a place seem more real rather than just interpreting it as words from a text. This is not to say that text documents are not useful or a thing of the past, but the use of historical GIS provides a “powerful means of communication of historical phenomena for the public and also of collecting georeferenceable historical source through crowdsourcing activities” (p.419). Another feature that digital mapping can bring, that a normal map cant, is being able to show time and space of an area. This is due to that with deep mapping the user is allowed to use layers which have different maps of the same location but from different time periods. This allows for movement and change to be visible while on a single map it is frozen on just one moment. Some well known sites that use this are Google Map, and Open Street Map. These can be described as coming from bottom up approaches or also known as from the public to professionals (p.422). As for other sites that fit the more historical sense would be “Honoring our Veterans” by ESRI and the “TraMonti” project by the University of Pisa which uses a dynamic map. These follow the top down approach which is from professional to the public (p.422).  While their start is different both approaches still allow the material to connect with the public and academic alike.

            Not too long ago I was able to try out digital mapping and see how it works. I learned how to use Map Warper which as the name indicates warps maps from a map of the past to its current day counterpart. The site itself is simple to navigate and is open to the public to upload their own maps and creating their own “map warping.” While the site is simple to navigate and uploading your maps is easy the difficulty lies in aligning the maps to each other. This is due to that sometimes maps of certain areas are quite different to their current day counterpart to the point where finding certain markers is difficult to find. So this process might take a good minute to figure out. We were also able to make our own maps on the UNT ArcGIS. This process was a bit more detailed than the Map Warper site though that’s because on the UNT site we had to add the labels and details ourselves. Overall learning about digital maps and being able to create digital maps was a helpful and eye opening experience. Especially since before the readings and the activity I never realized how common it was and how useful it can be in academic projects especially those involving specific areas. It also emphasizes that new things can be quite helpful not only in the academic sense but also in the public sense despite how daunting the involvement of new technology can be.

Mogorovich, Paolo. Salvatori, Enrica, “Historical GIS” in Handbook of Digital Public History (Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, 2022)

Gibbs Fred, “Mapping and Maps in Digital and Public History” in Handbook of Digital Public History (Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, 2022)