Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

Magnificent Maps of New York by Kate Marshall.

From the post:

The British Library’s ongoing project to catalogue and digitise the King’s Topographical Collection, some 40,000 maps, prints and drawings collected by George III, has highlighted some extraordinary treasures. The improved and up-dated catalogue records are now accessible to all, anywhere in the world, via the Library’s catalogue, Explore, and offer a springboard for enhanced study.

Your donations to this and other projects enable us to digitise more of our collections, the results of which are invaluable. One such example of further research using material digitised with help from donors is the recently published book by Richard H. Brown and Paul E. Cohen, Revolution. Mapping the Road to American Independence, 1755-1783, which features a number of maps from the K.Top.
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The Explore link takes to the main interface for the British Library but Maps is a more direct route to the map collection materials.

Practically everyone has made school presentations about their country’s history. With resources such as the British Map collection becoming available online, it isn’t too much to expect student to supplement their reports with historical maps.

Enjoy!

Visit every place on this vintage US map for the most epic road trip ever by Phil Edwards.

Part of the joy of this map comes from being old enough to remember maps similar to this one.

Critics can scan the map for what isn’t represented as tourist draws.

Consider it to be a snapshot of the styles and interests.

Most notable absence? Cape Canaveral.

I suspect its absence reflects the lead time involved in the drafting and publishing of a map at the time.

Explorer 1 (1958) and the first American in space, Alan Shepard (1961), both preceded this map.

Enjoy!

This interactive map shows how ‘wrong’ other maps are by Adam Taylor.

From the post:

Given how popular the Mercator projection is, it’s wise to question how it makes us view the world. Many have noted, for example, how the distortion around the poles makes Africa look smaller than Greenland, when in reality Africa is about 14.5 times as big. In 2010, graphic artist Kai Krause made a map to illustrate just how big the African continent is. He found that he was able to fit the United States, India and much of Europe inside the outline of the African continent.

Inspired by Krause’s map, James Talmage, and Damon Maneice, two computer developers based out of Detroit, created an interactive graphic that really puts the distortion caused by the Mercator map into perspective. The tool, dubbed “The True Size” allows you to type in the name of any country and move the outline around to see how the scale of the country gets distorted the closer it gets to the poles.

Of course, one thing the map shows well is the sheer size of Africa. Here it is compared with the United States, China and India.

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This is a great resource for anyone who wants to learn more about the physical size of countries, but it is also an illustration that no map is “wrong,” some display the information you seek better than others.

For another interesting take on world maps, see WorldMapper where you will find gems like:

GDP Wealth

Absolute Poverty

Or you can rank countries by their contributions to science:

Science Research

None of these maps is more “true” than the others.

Which one you choose depends on the cause you want to advance.

MapFig

Whether you are tracking the latest outrageous statements from the Repubicans for U.S. President Clown Car or have more serious mapping purposes in mind, you need to take a look at MapFig. There are plugins from WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and Omeka, along with a host of useful features.

There is one feature in particular I want to call to your attention: “Create highly customized leaflet maps quickly and easily.”

I stumbled over that sentence because I have never encountered “leaflet” maps before. Street, terrain, weather, historical, geological, archaeological, astronomical, etc., but no “leaflet” maps. Do they mean a format size? As in a leaflet for distribution? Seems unlikely because it is delivered electronically.

FAQ was no help. No hits at all.

Of course, you are laughing at this point because you know that “Leaflet” (note the uppercase “L”) is a JavaScript library developed by Vladimir Agafonkin.

So a “leaflet map” is one created using the Leftlet Javascript Library.

Clearer to say “Create highly customized maps quickly and easily using the Leaflet JS library.”

Yes?

Enjoy!

Mapping the History of L.A.’s Notorious Sprawl by Betsy Mason.

From the post:

(Apologies for the distortion, the map really needs a full page and to be seen when interactive.)

From the post:

THE SPRAWLING BUILTSCAPE of Los Angeles always seems to have people there riled up in one way or another. Lately there are rumblings about “classic” L.A. homes being displaced by bigger, more modern houses, changing the face of established neighborhoods. Even people with enormous mansions are complaining about the enormouser mansions people are building next door. And this is just one of the ongoing storylines in an ever-morphing city.

Now, urban designer Omar Ureta has created an interactive map to help tell some of these stories. His Built:LA project shows the ages of almost every existing building in the city, and can break them down by decade to reveal how the city has grown over time (works best in Chrome or Firefox).

“There’s so much discussion going on right now in how L.A. is urbanizing, I wanted to create a tool that could contribute to the dialogue,” Ureta, who moved to L.A. nine years ago from the Inland Empire, told me in an email. “I’m excited that the map is actually making people ask more questions about their neighborhood, their city and the whole region.”
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Ureta’s combining of data from a variety of sources enables users to peel back layers of construction in L.A. Makes me curious about forward looking “what-if” maps based on local history of development?

This project should be an inspiration for either historical or future projecting maps of urban construction.

Hand Drawn Map Association

The homepage promises:

The Hand Drawn Map Association (HDMA) is an ongoing archive of user submitted maps and other interesting diagrams created by hand.

From Here to There: A Curious Collection: A Curious Collection from the Hand Drawn Map Association.

From the page about the book:

The situation is as familiar as it is mundane: planning to visit friends in an unfamiliar part of the city, you draw yourself a basic map with detailed directions. In 2008, artist and designer Kris Harzinski founded the Hand Drawn Map Association to collect simple drawings of the everyday. Fascinated by these accidental records of a moment in time, he soon amassed a wide variety of maps, ranging from simple directions to maps of fictional locations, found maps, and maps of unusual places (such as a map of a high school locker), including examples by such well-known luminaries as Abraham Lincoln, Ernest Shackleton, and Alexander Calder.

From Here to There celebrates these ephemeral documents—usually forgotten or tossed after having served their purpose—and gives them their due as everyday artifacts. The more than 140 maps featured in this book, including, among many others, maps of an imaginary country for ants, of a traffic island in Australia, of a childhood fort, and of the Anne Frank House in Amseterdam, are as varied and touching as the stories they tell.

Does the ephemeral nature of these maps have a lesson for topic maps? While long lived topic maps are one use case, are temporary, even very temporary topic maps another?

Are there topic maps that I don’t need/want to persist beyond their immediate use?

The time and resources would vary from topic maps meant for long term usage, but so should the doctrines for subject identity?

I don’t have a copy of the book, yet, but there is much to be learned here.