The project that I worked on earlier is linked here.
Working on the mapping adventures in our lab, I had a lot of fun because it kind of reminded me of the type of websites I would visit as a kid and enjoyed learning from! Some possibilities of things that require public contribution, like this project, make digital humanities projects both educational and beneficial for future understanding of historical understandings of different areas on the globe. Consolidating maps like these with cross-referenced sources could help build our understanding of cities and what buildings existed, got destroyed, or were built on top of – and the history of where cities stand today. Next steps in a project like this is adding individualized context from other historical sources such as primary sources from the time to be able to make history of a map more accessible and understanding for a common reader. One issue with georeferencing that could come up is the accuracy of historical maps. Not all historical sources had a full understanding of proportion and certain omissions of areas. In this sense, we need to consider what areas are typically recorded with maps and what types of places mapmakers of the past may not choose to include on maps (like historically segregated areas or maybe red-light districts). I am actually not sure where this would not be an appropriate method for research questions, but maybe I am just not thinking creatively enough. This process change my understanding a little of some of the spatial digital humanities projects I explored earlier espesailly with understanding how they approached the project and what the many possibilities of what you can make from the blueprint of a historic map (such as 3D recreated models of areas). I am interested to see if we will work with building off of maps for any future projects for this class!
