I decided to try and find an article that showed a connection between GIS and the history of music. While searching I found theSeattle Music Map. Seattle is one of today’s most dynamic music cities, where a rich history feeds a lifestyle that is all about innovation, inspiration, and rocking the house every day and night. Visitors to the site are able to click on any location on the map to find out more information about music-related events that happened there. The website covers music from the Vaudeville Era (1864- 1925), Classic Jazz era (1917- 1933), Flower Power, Light Show (1967- 1970), and the Punk Era (1976- 1983) as well as many others. One notable attraction in the heart of Seattle is the Jimmy Hendrix Statue on 900 E. Pine St. This privately commissioned artwork shows Seattle’s legendary axeman in a typically flamboyant performance pose.
To find out more about Seattle’s vibrant music history and the must-see places when going to Seattle, please visit Seattle Music Map.
Digital History is an amazing website that documents world history in a way that is easy for all ages to understand. The site provides visitors with an interactive map, online textbook, documents, exhibitions, an various research guides for both teachers and students. The interactive map is a Timeline that documents the history of America from the 1500s to the 1990s. As the user navigates through the years, symbols pop up on the map representing various social, political, and cultural events. The user can rollover the symbols to get more information and also click on them to get a better description as well as a link to a site providing more detailed research information.
For more information on this topic, please visit this site.
The David Rumsey Historical Map Collection has over 20,000 maps and images online. The collection focuses on rare 18th and 19th century North American and South American maps and other cartographic materials. Historic maps of the World, Europe, Asia, and Africa are also represented. Collection categories antique atlas, globe, school geography, maritime chart, state, county, city, children’s, and manuscript maps. The collection can be used to study history, genealogy and family history.
The YouTube video depicts Part 3 of a talk given by David Rumsey at the March 6, 2008 launch of his historical map library and exhibition in the virtual world of Second Life. The talk was delivered at the Rumsey Map Islands in Second Life. All of the maps in the talk can also be seen and downloaded from Rumsey’s free online map library at http://www.davidrumsey.com/index.html The site makes use of the GIS (Geographic Information System) 3D viewer, a unique 3D browser based viewer that lets you fly through historic maps in three dimensions. The maps are also available in the traditional two-dimensional GIS format. David Rumsey uses a special GIS Browser that allows integration and interaction of historical maps with current geospatial data and other historical maps. Examination of the maps in GIS reveals changes in the history of the areas shown on the maps.
Eleven historical maps of the San Francisco Bay area from 1851 to 1926, eighteen historical maps of the Boston area from 1776 through 1897, over thirty historical maps covering the area of the 1804 – 1806 Lewis and Clark Expedition, 35 maps of Washington D.C., and 32 maps of New York City are now available for viewing in the GIS Browser. Additional historic maps of U.S. cities and regions will be added in the near future including Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver, Seattle, Yosemite Valley, and Lake Tahoe. The current geospatial data that can be overlaid and compared to the historical maps includes roads, lakes, parks, state boundaries, aerial photography, topographic mapsheets, digital elevation models and satellite imagery.
For more information on this topic, pleas visit this site.
The Department of Geography at Texas State University has embarked on a project to explore the Holocaust from a geographic perspective. Working together with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the project members have examined Nazi convoy movements in France during the years of occupation by the Germans (1942-1944). Using GIS (Geographic Information Systems), interactive models were created to help visualize these complex spatial and temporal activities.
Currently the project is separated into two parts. One that analyzes the demographics of the men, women, and children that were deported from France to the Auschwitz, a concentration camp famous for the enormous amount of murders that occurred there. While the vast majority of the people that were carried off like cattle to the slaughter were Jews; Slavs, Christians, homosexuals, politicians, gypsies, and non-whites were also persecuted.
The second part of the project focuses on the land-area changes during on the war and also on the frequency of the convoy transports. It presents the percentage of victims that were killed on arrival to Auschwitz and also the number in thousands that died from each convoy.
The 5th Street Cemetery Necrogeographical Study is a GIS-based project that marries current GIS, GPS and surveying technologies with traditional historical research and fieldwork. Begun in October 2001, the project has focused on two cemeteries located inside the limits of Lewiston, Idaho, a city with a population of 31,000. Normal Hill Cemetery, the present graveyard, was founded in 1888. The 5th Street site was first used as early as 1862 and continued in use until closed to further burials in December 1888. Today, the 5th Street site is known as Pioneer Park.
The purpose of the project was initially to introduce selected junior high school students to the use of global positioning system (GPS) and geographic information systems (GIS) management to plot and analyze patterns at the Normal Hill site. A consequence of the students’ findings in the initial phase of the project findings required extensive investigations that grew out of a further need to answer important questions. Research has since shifted to the site of the original city cemetery, where many graves are suspected to still exist.
The project was originally centered at Jenifer Junior High School. In September 2004, the project moved its operations to Lewiston High School as the students matriculated. Participating students act as technology assistants and have been trained in the use of ArcView 3.2 and the global positioning system. In the fall of 2004, all research assistants trained with ArcGIS 9.
To find out more about this project, please visit this site.
Mapping the Du Bois Philadelphia Negro is a research, education, and outreach project dedicated to using new technology and archival data to recreate the survey W.E.B. Du Bois conducted of Philadelphia’s Seventh Ward for his 1899 classic book, The Philadelphia Negro. Du Bois was invited to conduct a survey of Blacks living in the 7th Ward by the University of Pennsylvania. Du Bois lived in Philadelphia for a year during which he went door-to-door, interviewing each of the 2,500 black households. He classified each of them by social class according to his own judgment and used colors to represent each group on a map of the seventh ward. Du Bois’ final 500-page report, which became known as the Philadelphia Negro, addressed the history of blacks in Philadelphia, employment, housing, churches, crime, and family composition. It included a mix of harsh Victorian judgments on lower class blacks and insightful comments about racism and discrimination. Du Bois’ methods were well ahead of his time, combining ethnography, survey methods, mapping, and statistical analysis.
The project’s staff have so far have recreated the Old Seventh Ward as Du Bois would have found it using GIS and historical census data. Visitors are able to search the database using the map, last name, or address and also make own thematic maps. In addition to introducing students to the power of geographic information systems (GIS) mapping and the fun of analyzing primary historical documents, the program aims to draw attention to the history of the vibrant African American community that once lived in Center City. The part of downtown Philadelphia that Du Bois studied is now predominantly white and has some of the most expensive real estate in the region, but at the turn of the century, it was home to more Blacks of all classes than any other part of Philadelphia. The project staff also hope that, by engaging people in this fascinating story about Du Bois’ research and the people he studied, they can facilitate an honest dialog about how race has shaped cities like Philadelphia and continues to shapes our lives.
For more information on this project, please visit this site.
Williamsburg, Virginia is the site of an enormous historic district! Scores of original buildings, hundreds of homes, shops, and public buildings are reconstructed over 301 acres – most on their original foundations. Rare animal breeds, trades, and gardens add layers of authenticity to the recreated town. Before going to see the actual town, visitors can use Tour the Town, an interactive map, to explore the historic area and properties of colonial Williamsburg. Map features include the ability to be able to click and drag the map to move throughout the Historic Area and using the “Take a Tour” option for a guided interactive tour. Online tours include historic buildings, historic trades, things of interest to children, and more. New audio, video, and photography is also constantly being added to the map.
For mor information on the Wonders of Williamsburg, Virginia, please visit this site.
Columbia Cemetery at Ninth and Pleasant Street in Boulder, Colorado, is a virtual “Who’s Who” of early Boulder—a historic, cultural, and artistic resource containing the remains of many of the city’s founders and pioneers. Initially established in 1870 on 10 acres of cattle-grazed pastureland, the cemetery today has 6,500 burials and 3,000 headstones. The tombstones not only mark the graves of early pioneers who have helped make Boulder what it is today, but they are also narratives describing Colorado’s social and economic structure, its religious tenets, and ethnic composition. The epitaphs, engravings, and decorations provide insight into earlier customs, religious beliefs, folklore, art, and medicine. Homemade Depression-era “folk markers” are right next to ornate and towering granite monuments belonging to bank presidents. Marble lambs and doves mark the graves of children felled by scarlet fever, diphtheria, and tuberculosis, and graves adorned with flowers, stuffed animals, and coins poignantly indicate recent visits to century old burials.
In 2001, the Columbia Cemetery Preservation project manager approached the Boulder GIS team, which uses ArcIMS to ask if a Web site dedicated to preserving the history of the cemetery could be created. This way the vast about of genealogical information cold easily be accessed from one place. In 2002, Oracle-based ArcSDE was used to store a cemetery map that was digitized and registered to the city’s aerial photography base map. Tables were created to hold each name, biographical sketch, cemetery lot, and grave marker photograph. By linking the biographical information table to a grave lot feature, Web site visitors are able to query and display biographical information with ArcIMS software’s query server. The final product consisted of attractive Web pages presenting maps, scanned records, photographs of grave markers, lists of all people buried in a particular cemetery lot, and biographical information.
For more information on this topic, please visit this site.
BBC uses interactive maps to detail the history of Britain. On of these maps tracks the start of slavery in Britain to it’s abolition in 1807. The transatlantic slave trade involved the enforced transportation and enslavement of millions. The map allows the reader to follow dynamic trails across Africa, the Caribbean and the UK with text, images and audio to explore the abolition of British slavery. It provides information on how the slave trade worked, resistance and abolition, and various facts and figures about slavery.
For more information on this topic, please visit this site.
The Historical Society of Somerset Hills hosts an annual Journey through the Past of Somerset county, New Jersey around every second weekend in October. Families are invited to spend a weekend touring various historical sites. With the choice of visiting any or all of these twenty-five sites, visitors will have the opportunity to learn much about their former occupants, some among which were quite distinguished statesmen and national leaders; how they occupied their day to day lives, from daily work responsibilities and pleasurable pastimes to the difficult hardships endured during the American Revolution.
Visitors are able to take a virtual aerial tour of the various sites using Google maps and Google Earth.
