Week 6 Blog Post: I Have a Feeling We Are Still in Kansas

Margie
Fri, 21 Oct 2022 02:01:04 +0000
Week 6, blog, Digital Humanities, gis, mapping

This week for our blog we georectified some old maps, by putting corresponding latitude and longitude data on the map. The map I got was a Postal Service Map of Kansas

The information page for the map

Spatial DH

This project gave me a different perspective on spatial DH. I assumed people making these maps were mostly making their own map and putting data into that. This is an example of where maps are already made and you are comparing them. This project is almost a study in mapmaking. Not that you can’t get useful information, but it’s more looking at what certain types of maps are being used for. It was a relatively recent map and was made by the postal service. So its role and format is very similar to a typical Google maps type map we would have now.

You can access this map as a GEOTIFF or open it in many geo software sites. This one could be quite useful in checking accuracy and seeing how the postal service might’ve used or created a map like this. I also could see looking at this map and comparing which types of things are highlighted, that might be useful for the postal service. Or looking at what isn’t as accurate.

Difficulties

This map didn’t pose as much of a problem, but some maps might not be great for this georectifying technique. If a map is more for perspective it won’t shift well into the “actual” world it is trying to represent. This could make latitude and longitude data that is collected inaccurate or not very helpful. These maps might be better for art history, but not necessarily precise geographic analysis.

The overlay of Kansas

Where mapping might not be effective

We talked a bit about this aspect in class, but I thought a compelling one might be compared in a very specific way. Comparison might work well over a gradient. That is when all parts of a certain area have data to use for comparison. But when we are looking at somewhere as a whole compared to somewhere else it might be super effective to use a map. For example if we wanted to compare Minneapolis to Chicago on population. It would be a bit silly to just map those two stats and compare when you could just look at the numbers.