Mapping Gothic France

If your interests lie in mapping, digital humanities, and things Gothic, check out this web site: Mapping Gothic France. 

"With a database of images, texts, charts and historical maps, Mapping Gothic France lets you explore parallel stories of Gothic architecture and the formation of France in the 12th and 13th centuries, considered in three dimensions: Space, Time and Narrative"

There's a lot here, all related to France and cathedral architecture. The curators of the site have included georectified archival maps, an interactive timeline, loads of photographs (geolocated, of course) and cathedral footprints - like the ones above for Notre Dame and Cathedrale S-Etienne.

"Though today the shape of France is a well-known polygon (reaching northward up to its containing coastline, stretching southward to the Pyrenees), in the middle ages the French kingdom was not so cookie-cut. Imagine the history of France as a history of polygons, and you'll witness the kingdom's outward expansion. A disjointed set of Capetian pockets of land -- the holdings of Hugh Capet, founder of the dynasty -- slowly grow outward by fits and starts: feudal custom, marriage and warfare, celebrations and battles. Click "Begin" to watch that story."

 

This site came to my attention following the New York Times article on digital humanities projects. The author of the piece put out a call for other digital projects in the humanities, so go to the link if you want some additional interesting pages to check out. 

Then I got a comment on my blog post from Trinity College's Jack Dougherty talking about how folks at small liberal arts colleges can get these large-scale digital projects off the ground when they partner with larger institutions. Mapping Gothic France is a collaboration between Columbia University and Vassar College (props to my former colleague Matthew Slaats from Vassar!) and it seems a good model to follow. The results are amazing.

 

Nottingham Caves Survey Using LiDAR

Check out the Nottingham Caves web site and video with its remarkable use of LiDAR imagery. This from the web site:

"The Nottingham Caves Survey is in the process of recording all of Nottingham’s 450+ sandstone caves. The project is now underway and we are surveying caves even as you read this. Keep checking the website for newly-surveyed caves! You can read more about the caves, see photographs, watch fly-through videos and take virtual tours by clicking the links on the Cave Map below...."

Check out all three videos here.

Caption for image: Laser scanned orthographic plan of the Goose Gate caves, Nottingham. These caves include a medieval malt kiln, 18th-century brewery cellars and a 19th-century butchery. Credit: Trent & Peak Archaeology / The University of Nottingham.

Thanks to a tweet from Geoparadigm. Wow's the word, AC!

Digital Humanities - Or How Geospatial Technologies Creep Into the Liberal Arts

The New York Times had an article on digital humanities yesterday. Though it may not be a thrilling time for humanities-focused disciplines, it seems a thriving time for digital humanities with grant money flowing in and places like the George Mason Univ's Center for History and New Media in the news on a regular basis.

From the Times article by Patricia Cohen:"The next big idea in language, history and the arts? Data."

And much of that digital humanistic data has space and time attached to it as many of the projects listed in Cohen's piece are geospatial in nature or scope. And that's why I'm thrilled with all the digital humanities interest. Check out the Thomas Jefferson project out of the Univ of Virginia. Of course, history, religion and language were affected by place, topography, landscape, weather. You know, mappeable variables. But (some) historians and the like are now mapping those variables to analyze for patterns.

"Some pioneering efforts began years ago, but most humanities professors remain unaware, uninterested or unconvinced that digital humanities has much to offer. Even historians, who have used databases before, have been slow to embrace the trend."

This I know all too well. I knew a professor interested in incorporating environmental and geospatial context in his Israel and Palestinian Authority course or one who wanted to map New York City neighborhoods from the 1920s to look at how demographics affected one writer's novels. The stumbling block for these and the many other professors - inside and outside the humanities - who wanted to investigate geospatial relationships but did not learn GIS while getting the PhD was taking the time to do/learn/keep up with/incorporate GIS into teaching and research which would only hurt those assistant professors when it came time for review for tenure. I lost them all that way. These digital humanities projects take a person devoted to the task of finding the hard copy materials, digitizing the information, interpreting the data along with colleagues, making those data presentable to a potentially non-academic audience. Large groups of professionals, some teaching and some not, at places like the CHNM or at the Univ of Virginia's Scholar's Lab are where these projects can take shape and make digital data come alive. 

One other aspect of this Times article that pleases me is the full mention, praise even, for GIS. They even spelled it out. I've had issues in the past with the Times writing stories with a geospatial angle and never mentioning the mapping that made the magic happen.

I found some of the inevitable Twitter back-chatter that followed the posting of the Times piece quite interesting. Here are two from Dan Cohen:

A) "7 stages of reaction to digital humanities: 1. Ignorance 2. Belittling 3. Denial 4. "Well, digital archives are useful" ... (1/2)"

and

B) "... 5. "Wait, how did you do that?" 6. "You mean it can complement our other ways of knowing?" 7. Acceptance. (2/2)"

and a followed from Tom Scheinfeldt: "@dancohen But what I'd most like to see is #8: "hey, let's work together."

Yep, that sounds about right. I don't think things are quite there yet, I mean at numbers 7 or 8 (see quote above), at small liberal arts colleges but we must be moving in the right direction.

Middlebury College Geography Majors Student Publication

Check out Middlebury Geographic. This beautiful student-produced publication out of Middlebury College's Geography department sets its sights on looking like National Geographic magazine and succeeds. With lovely photographs, interesting articles that span the world, and a slick on-line interface, Middlebury Geographic is a nice contribution to the world of travel magazines with the added attraction of including an occasional story that features GIS. The students use the self-publishing platform Issuu. Nice job!

Do Not Use Google Maps to Settle Border Disputes

Taking a close look at results in Google Maps, the Nicaraguan army has decided to lay claim to an island that has been a long-time holding of Costa Rica. I am not going to go into details here because the story broke on Friday and is well-documented by others (including Google). I do want to reiterate a quote from an excellent post by The Basement Geographer on why it is folly to use a web map service like Google Maps or Bing to settle border disputes.

"They are simply organisations that produce mapping products. It is up to the user to be aware of this. To be clear, both countries’ official maps claim the island falls on their side of the river; it’s just awfully silly to use a map from the Internet to justify a particular claim."

I will add that Google has never claimed accuracy in their mapping. How can they? Google sometimes uses content built with other map datums and road map geodata can be off by 1/2 kilometer. We find greatest accuracy in Google products in the U.S. and Europe but everywhere else, hold your nose and hope for the best. They have loads and loads of geodata for the entire world that they are displaying in Google Earth and Maps. How can these data align in any way that will allow for scientific (or military) accuracy? Google Maps, Bing and Google Earth can be used for display purposes, a generalized resource (think Wikipedia) and as a way to verify that some place exists relative to another place. Don't use Google Maps to 1) measure (with precision) the distance between two places, 2) quantify (with precision) an area of a region, or 3) claim a border. The internet is filled with lots of information, some true some not true. These web maps are the internet and they're to be used with a grain of salt.

Added 11/8/10: For a definitive discussion of this issue, please see Stefan Geens' post at Ogle Earth.

The image above is from the Google Lat-Long blog post about the Nicaragua/Costa Rica island dispute and depicts a map drawn in 1897. Yes, we still need these old, accurately drawn paper maps!