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

Uncovering Hidden Text on a 500-Year-Old Map That Guided Columbus by Greg Miller.

Christopher Columbus probably used the map above as he planned his first voyage across the Atlantic in 1492. It represents much of what Europeans knew about geography on the verge discovering the New World, and it’s packed with text historians would love to read—if only the faded paint and five centuries of wear and tear hadn’t rendered most of it illegible.

But that’s about to change. A team of researchers is using a technique called multispectral imaging to uncover the hidden text. They scanned the map last month at Yale University and expect to start extracting readable text in the next few months, says Chet Van Duzer, an independent map scholar who’s leading the project, which was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The map was made in or around 1491 by Henricus Martellus, a German cartographer working in Florence. It’s not known how many were made, but Yale owns the only surviving copy. It’s a big map, especially for its time: about 4 by 6.5 feet. “It’s a substantial map, meant to be hung on a wall,” Van Duzer said.

Extracting the text is going to take some effort but expectations are that high resolution images will appear at the Beinecke Digital Library at Yale in 2015.

Greg covers a number of differences between the Martellus map (1491) and the Waldseeüller map (1507), as well as their places in historical context.

You should pass this post onto any friends who think Columbus “discovered” the world was round. I don’t see any end of the world markers on the Martellus map.

Do you?

Shoothill GaugeMap

From the about page:

The Shoothill GaugeMap is the first interactive map with live river level data from over 2,400 Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales river level gauges in England and Wales.

The extensive network of river level gauges across England and Wales covers all the major rivers as well as many smaller rivers, streams and brooks. The data displayed on each of the river level gauges on GaugeMap is recorded at 15 minute intervals by the Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales.

For more information on how to use GaugeMap, please see the help file.

If you live in England or Wales and are concerned about potential flooding, this may be the map for you!

The map reports data from 2400 river level gauges and you can follow individual gauges via Twitter.

I first saw this in a tweet by Rod Plummer.

In case you are interested in other river gauge information:

RiverGauges.com USA only but excludes most of Texas, Georgia, Florida, and most of the Eastern seaboard. Not sure why. Has historical and current data.

RiverApp USA and Europe, over 1,000 rivers. Can’t really comment since I don’t have a smart phone. (Contact me for an smail address if you want to donate a recent smart phone.)

How to find all the maps published on GOV.UK by Giles Turnbull.

A “trick” you need to note for finding all the maps published on GOV.UK.

I don’t know of any comparable “trick” or even a single location for all the maps published by the United States government. If you were to include state and local governments, the problem would be even worse.

If you know of cross-agency map directories in the United States (or elsewhere), please sing out!

Thanks!

A neat idea for maps:

See on Twitter.

I can think of a number of use cases for street slope information. Along with surveillance camera coverage, average lighting conditions, average police patrols, etc.

I first saw this in a tweet by Bob Lehman.

Maps need context by Jon Schwabish and Bryan Connor.

From the post:

It might be the case that maps are the most data-dense visualizations. Consider your basic roadmap: it includes road types (highways, toll roads), directions (one-way, two-way), geography (rivers, lakes), cities, types of cities (capitals), points of interest (schools, parks), and distance. Maps that encode statistical data, such as bubble plots or choropleth maps, are also data-dense and replace some of these geographic characteristics with different types of data encodings. But lately we’ve been wondering if most maps fail to convey enough context.

As an example, consider this map of poverty rates by districts in India. It’s a fairly simple choropleth map and you can immediately discern different patterns: high poverty rates are concentrated in the districts in the northernmost part of the country, on part of the southeast border, and in a stretch across the middle of the country. Another set of high-poverty areas can be found in the land mass in the northeast part of the map. But here’s the thing: we don’t know much about India’s geography. Without some context—plotting cities or population centers—we can only just guess what this map is telling me.

Many readers will be more familiar with the geography of the United States. So when maps like this one from the Census Bureau show up, we are better equipped to understand it because we’re familiar with areas such as the high-poverty South and around the Texas-Mexico border. But then again, what about readers familiar with basic U.S. geography, but not familiar with patterns of poverty? How useful is this map for them?

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In addition to establishing the potential need for more context, Jon and Bryan go on to describe a tool for building and comparing maps with different data sets included.

You should take context into account in deciding what groups of topics and associations to merge into or leave out of a topic map. Too much detail and your user may lose sight of the forest. Too little and they may not be able to find it at all.

Mapped with a purpose by Andrew Janes.

From the post:

A few years ago, a colleague asked me for help in finding a map. What he wanted, he told me, was a fairly up-to-date map that showed Great Britain at ‘a normal scale’.

After laughing briefly at him, and then apologising for my rudeness, I plucked a road atlas from one of the bookshelves in our staff reading room. Fortunately, this seemed to fit the bill perfectly.

With the benefit of hindsight, I think that there are two morals to this story:

1. What is obvious to one person is not obvious to another. Like any good researcher, my colleague should have tried to explain what he wanted in a less ambiguous way. Equally, like any good public services archivist, I should have helped him to shape his request into something more sensible.

2. There is no such thing as a ‘normal’ map. The features and attributes of any map (including its scale) depend on its purpose. Why was it made and what was it intended to be used for? Two maps of the same place made at roughly the same time, but for different reasons, can look quite unlike one another.
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Andrew illustrates his point with three maps of Nottingham made during the early 20th century. Vastly different even to the unpracticed eye.

The maps are quite fascinating but I leave to you to visit Andrew’s post for those.

Andrew then concludes with:

If you want to look for an old map and you think that The National Archives might have what you want, the map pages on our website are your best starting point.

When searching, bear in mind that a map showing the right place at the right date may not suit your needs in other ways. In other words, think about ‘what’ and ‘why’, as well as ‘where’ and ‘when’.

Those are some of the same rules for writing and reading topic maps.

I say “some” because Andrew is presuming a location on a particular sphere, whereas topic maps don’t start with that presumption. 😉

There Should Be a Checklist for Maps by Betsy Mason.

From the post:

Earlier this week, Stephanie Evergreen posted this great checklist for data visualizations. She and Ann Emery designed it to help social scientists understand the elements of a successful graph and offer guidance on how to make a graph better.

I’ve seen the list tweeted by data viz experts like Alberto Cairo and had it forwarded it to me by a designer I used to work with. It got me thinking that a list like this for maps would be really useful. We’re beginners at mapmaking here at Map Lab, and we’d love a list like this to check our own maps against, and to help us evaluate maps we come across.
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Betsy has located one such guide but is seeking your advice on what should be on the checklist for map?

A checklist for maps, no disrespect intended towards data visualizations, is a very deep question. Maps, useful ones at any rate, reflect their author, purpose, intended audience, social context, technology for making the map, etc.

Suggestions? Comments?

From: The evolution of Ordance Survey mapping:

If you’re a lover of old maps, you may be aware of the changes that have taken place on Ordnance Survey maps over the years. Changes to colour, styling, the depiction of roads and vegetation for example. As you can imagine, visitors to our Southampton head office often want to visit our Cartography teams and see the work they’re doing now – and compare this to how things used to be done.

The Cartography team put their heads together and came up with a display to show visitors the past present and future roles of cartography. One aspect of the display was produced by Cartographer Alicja Karpinska, making use of her photography and digital image manipulation skills, to complete an image showing the evolution of Ordnance Survey mapping.

See the post for more details.

Assuming that topic maps recur in particular subject areas, a similar evolution of mapping is a distinct possibility at some point in the future.

Indexers map properties to subjects every day so topic map can’t claim to be the first to do so.

However, topic maps are the first technology that I am aware of that makes that mapping explicit. That a rather important difference and is crucial to supporting an “evolution of mapping” for topic maps at some point in the future.

Digitising Tithe Maps by Einion Gruffudd.

From the post:

Cynefin is a Welsh word for the area you are familiar with. It is also the name of a project for digitising the Tithe Maps of Wales. This is a considerable challenge, there are over a thousand of them and they are large, some are two by three metres or more. The maps are highly popular with the public, and with television programmes, and it is easy to see why. Not only are the maps very detailed, but they also have attached schedules or apportionment documents which include the names of the people who were paying tithes around the 1840s, and where they were farmers, as most were, more often than not the names of their fields are included.

The Cynefin project will produce digitised images of the maps and the apportionment documents, and much more as well. As there is such a wealth of information in the apportionment documents, they will be transcribed, but for this we are reliant on help from the community. We also plan to link the apportionment entries directly to the field numbers which are on the maps, this work will also involve volunteers. There will soon be a crowd sourcing platform giving the public an opportunity to contribute directly to the project.
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Think of these maps as being the equivalents of a modern data tax assessor’s maps for property taxes, sans the need to tithe to support the local church.

Such rich maps offer many opportunities to create links (read associations) between these records and other sources of information from the same time period.

Enjoy!

From Jane Goodall’s roots & shoots:

In Africa, the Jane Goodall Institute’s experts in conservation and science use Participatory Mapping to incorporate local, indigenous knowledge in the creation of conservation and development projects around chimpanzee habitats. At Roots & Shoots, our young people are the experts! You will use the same strategy as the Jane Goodall Institute field professionals to explore your community and identify areas to make a difference with a tool called Community Mapping.

Why Map?

How do you know where to make a difference if you don’t have a strong awareness of where you live? When you map your community you REALLY get to know about the people, animals and environment around you. Mapping is the key to discovering a real community need that leads to the most effective service campaigns. Master your mapping skills and get to know your community on a whole new level!

How to Map

There are several types of mapping tools for you to choose from. Are you tech savvy and love digital maps? Or are you the type that prefers to chart by hand? Regardless of which mapping tool you use (and you can use more than one), what matters is that you get out and take action!
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Jane Goodall launched this effort on her 80th birthday.

Check out the course as well as the article that tipped me off about it.

It will be interesting to see how communities are viewed by their members and not urban planners.

Perhaps conventional maps are more imperialistic than they appear at first blush. Ordinary people have lacked to tools to put forth contending views on mapping their communities. Mapping between “conventional” and “community” maps could be contentious.

I first saw this at: Jane Goodall launches online course in digital mapping by Katie Collins.