[OSM-talk] Historical Mapping Examples?

[Rob Warren]

Hi Kate.

I run the Muninn Project (http://blog.muninn-project.org/) which extracts 
data from First World War scanned archives. I've been lurking on the 
mailing list for a while now to get some background before asking 
about this very topic, but you beat me to it.

Would anyone be interested in creating "Open Trench Map - 1918 Edition"?

Historical mapping has some problems that are a bit different from 
conventional mapping in that 1) everything is a timestamp and 2) research 
people care very much about the data being 'wrong'.

So, besides the fact that trenches keep getting moved, bombed, renamed 
and worked on as the front moves back and forth, the maps also reflect what 
people *think* is happening on the other side.

So we get a German map of British trenches, a Canadian map of German 
trenches and the differences between what is happening and what people 
think is happening are of great historical value.

Unsuprisingly, sometimes different maps from the same army at the same 
time don't match up.

We have a lot of geo data that can be used to track individual soldiers on 
the map over the course of the war too, down to which trenches they were 
in.

I spend most of my time on data extraction, but I think historical mapping 
is something that needs to be worked on. I'd be interested in setting up 
an informal working group or exchange, please feel free to write me off or 
on-list.

best,
rhw

> Message: 5
> Date: Wed, 19 May 2010 07:41:06 -0400
> From: Kate Chapman <kate at maploser.com>
> Subject: [OSM-talk] Historical Mapping Examples?
> To: osm <talk at openstreetmap.org>
> Message-ID:
> 	<AANLkTimhBq1XyPQKRwE8gb1Cr6g1POo4A7aKsVpRfASv at mail.gmail.com>
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>
> Hi All,
>
> I'm attending THATCamp this weekend and would like to talk about
> OpenStreetMap.  THATCamp is an unconference specifically related to
> technology applied to the digital humanities.  One area I thought
> would be of interest would be historical related areas in
> OpenStreetMap.  I was thinking areas with historic value, rather than
> areas that are mapped and no longer exist.
>
> An example near me would be Arlington National Cemetery:
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=38.87964&lon=-77.06507&zoom=16&layers=B000FTFT
>
> Anyway if you have an examples along that vein that you think are
> particularly good please send them along.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Kate
> user:wonderchook