To me, georefrencing was a pretty fun activity thanks to the The David Rumsey Map Collection website. It made it pretty easy to pick an understandable map and get started. I picked a map of New York state. The map was on the more recent side, so it was relatively spatially consistent compared to some older maps. This made getting my first few points down not too hard. From there, I fixed various parts of the map that were slightly off. The result shows how overlaying old maps using georefrencing can reveal spatial information about the historical content of the old map.
This map shows various important points from when the map was made and their significance. By georefrencing it, we can get a better understanding of where those points actually are. As for next steps, I would spend more time making sure that the map is accurate based on all of the water bodies and borders. This does make me realize some of the limitations of georefrencing. If an old map doesn’t have many markers of landmarks that are still in the same position today (like borders that have stayed the same, or water bodies) then georefrencing gets a lot harder. I can also see some limitations when it comes to older maps that are very spatially inaccurate. It would become difficult to view and make sense of those older maps because of how warped they would have to become in order to overlay well with modern maps.
This process opened my eyes to how our understanding of geography has changed over time. That helped me make sense of why spatial digital humanities projects have the potential to be very useful in understanding historical information. Because we have gotten so much better at understanding space over time, we can now make sense of maps and the history behind them, like this map of New York does.
