I am probably the most incapable map-reader in the whole world (incorporating a Tom-Tom into the family probably saved my marriage!), so I was surprised by how much I enjoyed playing with maps this week.
Beginning with Google My Maps, I wanted to mark all kinds of spots. I can see how you could tell stories through plotting. It would be fun to mark-up family holidays and all kinds of stuff! Correcting the mistakes in the Australian National Heritage List so they would plot correctly became a bit of a google quest. I was able to map almost everything in the end by either replacing the ext with another detail or by removing some detail.
For example;
• Coranderrk – Change La to lane
• Koonlda Cave – Remove Cook
• Kingston and Arthurs Vale historic area – change ext to TAS
Moving on, I really like the way the Orbis map illustrates a story. It is a bit like a choose your own adventure book from the 80’s. Yes, I know many of you would be too young to remember those…
Many of the maps included in the Carto Gallery were very cool. My favourite was http://mortuarymapping.matrix.msu.edu/index.html. This site records the excavation of The Santa Clara Valley Medical Center (SCVMC) Historic Cemetery, providing a number of different filters. It includes what they have called a button map, which indicates people who were buried in hospital gowns. Burials took place in this cemetery in the early 20th century those buried in gowns were identified according to button patterns as the glass buttons survived. Very cool!
I also really enjoyed playing around with the Carto map populated with cycling accidents (not a very happy subject). Placing this data on the map really helps to make sense of information and makes it much more compelling than just looking at it in a black and white table. Using the variety of filters transformed the data in a different way
I am interested in trying to incorporate carto into the “Connections” web site that I am building. The limitation of 100 points per month could cause issues, but it is very useable. The other thing that I liked about the SCVMC Historic Cemetery site is the hand drawn burial map. Originally, I had thought that I might geolocate each burial, but it might be cleaner and more accurate just to geolocate the cemetery itself then provide a plan or map of the cemetery.
That’s all from me this session…
