{"id":1664,"date":"2016-11-07T12:05:43","date_gmt":"2016-11-07T20:05:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/?p=1664"},"modified":"2016-11-07T12:05:43","modified_gmt":"2016-11-07T20:05:43","slug":"locating-londons-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/2016\/11\/07\/locating-londons-past\/","title":{"rendered":"Locating London’s Past"},"content":{"rendered":"

The DH mapping project I chose to investigate was Locating London’s Past<\/a>, which allows users to locate various artifactual data, such as plague deaths and fire insurance,\u00a0on John Rocque’s 1746 map of London. This project incorporates datasets from various different sources\u2013mainly institutional (churches, hospitals, etc.)\u2013to compare and contrast happenings throughout London’s history. The map uses Geocoder, which automatically matches and checks names of places on a map. The Museum of London Archaeology conducted this research product to be able to catch a glimpse of London’s historical data through georeferencing\u2013slicing up the original map, warping it, and placing it on a more current understanding of the spherical globe. This feat is an act of obscuring the original data. Thus, the original map had to be altered and manipulated a little bit to relate it to the Museum’s narrative and understanding of London today. Then, one can compare Rocque’s map to the first accurate OS map of London (1869-80), interchangeable with a drop down menu on the home page.<\/p>\n

In conjunction with Turnbull’s contention that all maps are perspectival and subjective, this map definitely reinforces those ideals. The Museum of London Archaeology has created a loose narrative, seemingly up to our interpretation, based on its multiple datasets. Unfortunately, the map itself makes it hard to display these multiple datasets on the one map at the same time without it being too messy-looking. Also, many of the datasets are “unable” to be mapped because of their lack of full information… the records given are blank spaces to be filled in with names\/streets\/etc. that must be researched (in the datasets themselves) or known before searching the dataset, in order for it to be later placed on the map. This openness may be interesting to someone from London with a long family history there, but leaves the newcomer without any previously-known records to input in these blank spaces. Therefore, the project assumes that the map-user is a scholar or researcher, or at the very least is well-versed in London’s archaeological history.<\/p>\n

If I were to alter this map, I would give more options in searching datasets\u00a0through\u00a0a drop-down menu, instead of using blank spaces, in order to make the map easier to use for the naive user. The map reveals London’s archaeological past, but it obscures what can be found based on overly specific records\u2013some of which are unable to be mapped because they have to match up with data found in the dataset. I think the georeferencing of the map is fine, but I was unable to fully map any of the\u00a0datasets onto either of the maps due to my lack of knowledge of a person’s name matching up to a parish, for example. To alleviate this issue, I would make a pop-up window with the full dataset that the user can click on in order to find out how\/where it could be mapped onto each map. The site luckily gives ample information on each of the datasets’ backgrounds and I wish this had been incorporated better into the map’s interface, since everything is on a separate page. Overall, the map is interesting, but I did not find out as much as I had wanted to due to my lack of knowledge of specific records\u2013this is the main thing I would alter. Also, the webpage is quite bland in color and design, so I would also change these aspects to draw the users in more in order to help the user create a more specific narrative to follow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The DH mapping project I chose to investigate was Locating London’s Past, which allows users to locate various artifactual data, such as plague deaths and fire insurance,\u00a0on John Rocque’s 1746 … Continue reading “Locating London’s Past”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1664\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}