Using David Rumsey’s Georeferencer has given me a real appreciation for early cartographers. Modern technology and satellite imaging have made mapping the globe trivial, but that wasn’t always the case. What surprised me about the historical maps was the accuracy in which they plotted coastlines. They seemed to capture a lot of the finer details, like bays, small islands, and peninsulas. When georeferencing these maps I often had to make many adjustments to correctly place mainland features. I especially had trouble aligning rivers and lakes. However, when working maps that predominately featured coastlines, I usually only needed to place one or two points to accurately align the maps. A good example can be found here, which is a map of Lastovo (a small island east of Italy in the Mediterranean Sea). To get a good fit I ended up using coastal features to help me place coordinate points. I actually ended up placing a superfluous number of points, but the map was honestly pretty well aligned when I only had 4 points placed.
I think georeferencing maps also gives an interesting perspective on the how the map making process has changed. Below are two maps of the state of Florida. The first map was made in 1862 (figure 2) and the second was made in 1964 (figure 3). I think it is interesting to look at the differences in the level of details. It is not fair to compare the two since figure 2 is just a map of Florida and figure 3 is a map of the world. Nevertheless, the is a large difference in the quality of the maps. The two maps were made roughly 100 years apart and mapping and printing technologies changed a lot during that time frame. I think examining these differences could be insightful. Georeferencing is a powerful tool for digital humanists, and it is not limited to just historical maps. As we discussed in class, displaying data over coordinates can be an effective way to analyze geographic trends. I am really interested the travel maps of the museum objects for this class will look
