British Library: 3rd Georeferencer pilot announced

Using Georeferencer software from Klokan technologies, another 800 items have been selected for the Georeferencer Project from the British Library’s collection of over 4.5 million maps. The last time the British Library undertook such a project 708 maps were completed in less than one week.

”It’s easy to use and highly addictive – and a fascinating way to explore the past while improving the information that underpins our digitised collections. This project brings together people’s passion for maps and history with the latest online crowdsourcing tools,” says Kimberly Kowal, Lead Curator of Digital Mapping at the British Library. 

As a result of these previous successful rounds of public crowdsourcing, those maps are now spatially enabled, allowing users to search and navigate maps online. Maps from previous rounds are accessible through the Library’s Old Maps Online portal developed by Klokan technologies.

BMArchives.org launched

New website BMArchives.org has been launched. The site provides world-wide unique selection of digitised visual and cartographic historical material (over 30,000 images and almost 7000 high-resolution maps) for the public and international scientific community, opening up avenues into a major resource base for 19th and 20th century history of Christian missionaries.

The large archive of maps, photos and archival finding aids counting over 60.000 items is now available online and accessible to anybody who is interested. Coverage of the documents is very broad and includes mostly Africa, Asia and Oceania.
Klokan Technologies participated in development of this exciting project with customization of the open-source Omeka system, with development of a unique instant search technology based around a fast JavaScript interface (powered by Closure Library and AJAX), with application of IIPImage to stream large number of images and with Georeferencer to turn those images into maps.

The metadata follows the international standards: archival description is done in compliance with ISAD(G), and individuals and organisations are described using ISAAR (CPF). In addition, thesauri are being used for geographical and subject terms. The synchronization of the archival system with the website is implemented via OAI-PMH endpoint and uses the DublinCore metadata standard.

The mentioned technologies are available also to other culture heritage institutions seeking a way how to publish own digital holdings and metadata on the web. Feel free to contact us with your enquiries for customization and application of the used open-source components.

http://www.bmarchives.org/

Old Maps Online Project announced in New York

David Rumsey introduced OldMapsOnline (www.oldmapsonline.org) Project in the New York Public Library, together with Petr Pridal and Humprey Southall.

This innovative search engine allows users to search through map catalogues across a number of institutions in a geographical way. Users will no longer have to spend time identifying which institution might hold the maps they want to view as, for the first time,  the holdings of individual map libraries are presented together in a single interface. 

Initial map holdings come from the David Rumsey Map Collection, The National Library of Scotland, The British Library, the Moravian Library and the map collection of A Vision of Britain through Time and more will be added over the coming months. 

The system is built on MapRank Search, created by Klokan Technologies.

Old Maps Online: New York Public Library Announcement:http://www.slideshare.net/klokan/old-maps-online-new-york-public-library-announcement