Hello bloggers! How was your week?
This week we are looking at mapping programs and the way websites uses maps. I specifically decided to look at a project called Digital Harlem. This website shows everyday life in Harlem, a neighborhood in New York in the time period 1915-1930. When you open this website it shows us a map over New York that you can easily navigate through and you can easily navigate through and see for example where churches were, how the nightlife was, different events and even people.
There are five main categories that this map have been divided into which are churches, sports, numbers arrests, January 1925 and nightlife, which makes it easy to quickly browse through the website. However, if you want to look more detailed into Harlem in this time period there is a section where you can make your searches more detailed when it comes to places, time period and people. You can for example pick a specific event or a place with a lot of different options and chose a time period or time of the day and you can even chose what source you want the information from.
This website does not seem to have any storyline, it is just plain facts that you can interpret however you want. This somewhat connects to Turbull’s idea that all maps are either perspectival or subjective. I think this map is subjective because this map is broken down into pieces and presented by the people who made the website. For example the five categories that the map was divided into only shows one side of the everyday life in Harlem, and some people would may think that these were not the best way to present the everyday life there. Because the map is made out of public data, I believe that some information may have been lost which does obscure it to some degree.
I think this website is very cool because of how detailed it is and if you are looking for specific events you can fairly easily find it. The website was a little overwhelming at first though, but I found out how it works pretty quickly. I also did not know that it was only presenting facts and events from the Harlem area, which was a little confusing. But overall I think this map is a great tool to present the everyday life in Harlem.