JISC

The project will construct a search portal for finding online historical maps based on locality and period. Currently users must visit individual library websites and search their map catalogue, often via publication information or sometimes by typing in co-ordinates. Creating a geographical portal will allow users to focus on a particular location and time period, identifying all maps of interest from a range of different libraries in a single query, which they can then choose to visit. This project will also publish new “best practices” for defining persistent Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) to maintain hyperlinks consistently over long periods these will be developed through implementing them for the historical maps we will collate. 

To construct the portal we will assemble map metadata, including co-ordinates, from major collections in the UK and the USA plus selected European collections, therefore making the portal of value for all studying past times, not just cartographic historians. Substantial funding has gone into digitising historical maps but their use is frequently limited to specialist map library researchers. Eliminating the need to know precisely which map library website to visit to see which map and offering a search mechanism based on visual identification by the user will immediately improve accessibility to the maps. Simply making the maps easier to find will enable a much wider array of research and teaching purposes to be supported. 

Tied to this is the need to more deeply embed digital historical map use in mainstream historical research and historical GIS through improvement in metadata for citation. To facilitate this Universal Resource Locator (URLs) for the maps will be turned into URIs. This will significantly shorten the current convoluted URLs making them easier to read, write and remember and provide a stable address for use in the long term. Overall we will provide a simple interface focussed on software engineering without a demanding sustainability model for the libraries involved.