(Exercise adapted from Lincoln Mullen)
Before you make your own map, you need to become familiar with as wide a variety of maps as possible, including digital maps and analog, maps that have been made by scholars and maps that have not. Below is a list of online mapping projects.
Pick three projects from the list to explore and compare. Your aim is to gain familiarity with projects involving maps and mapmaking, both by scholars and on the web generally.
- American Migrations to 1880
- Atlantic Networks Project
- Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States
- Bdote Memory Map
- Dakota Land Map
- Digital Harlem
- Digital Harrisburg
- Geography of the Post & Gossamer Network
- Going to the Show
- Histories of the National Mall
- History Pin
- Holocaust Geographies Collective
- How Your Hometown Affects Your Chances of Marriage
- Hypercities
- Invasion of America
- Mapping Inequality
- Mapping Poverty in America
- Mapping Prejudice
- Mapping the Past
- Mapping the State of the Union
- Mapping Texts
- Murder Map (Archived)
- Native Land
- PhilaPlace
- Pelagios
- Pleiades
- Separados/Torn Apart
- Stop and Frisk is All But Gone from New York
- Railroads and the Making of Modern America
- Mapping ship logs
- Slave Revolt in Jamaica, 1760 – 1761
- Spread of U.S. Slavery, 1790–1860
- Stanford Spatial History Project
- Visualizing Emancipation
- 12 Tones of London
As you look through these projects, consider the following questions or prompts:
- What categories do these maps fit into? Start to envision a taxonomy of maps by considering the purposes of the maps, their audience, and their interfaces, among other axes of comparison.
- What is the grammar of mapping? In other words, what are the typical symbols that mapmakers use, and how can they be put in relation to one another?
- Which maps stood out to you as especially good or clear? Why?
- Which maps were the worst? What made them bad?
- How do scholarly maps differ from non-scholarly maps?
- What kind of data is amenable to mapping? What kinds of topics
- What accompanies maps? Who controls their interpretation? What is their role in making an argument?
- How do recent web maps compare to maps made online in the past few years? Are any of them broken? How can maps be made sustainable?
- Which of these maps are in your discipline? Which maps might be helpful models for your discipline?
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