Website Review Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States


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Vision 74

 

Website Review

Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States

By

Connie Cockrell

Copyright © 2014, Connie Cockrell, All Rights Reserved

 

http://www.dsl.richmond.edu/historicalatlas/

I found this website on the www.IO9.com site. I thought it'd be dry as dust but I loved looking at all of the maps. The About tab provides their goals.

"The Digital Scholarship Lab develops innovative digital humanities projects that contribute to research and teaching at and beyond the University of Richmond. It seeks to reach a wide audience by developing projects that integrate thoughtful interpretation in the humanities and social sciences with innovations in new media."

What that means to me is that I get a boat load of interesting data about the U.S. in a very wide variety of topics.

Getting into the site is easy. If you're the 'go for broke' type, just hit the Enter The Atlas button. Each time I entered this way, I was taken to the map for the Presidential Election, 1892. If you hit the Table of Contents button, you're taken to a Chapters in the Atlas page. From here you can select a topic which will take you to a sub-topics page.

A dark blue header is atop each map with the title of the map on the left and permanent tabs on the right to take you back to Home, About and others. Below the title in the header bar, is a zoom function to make the map smaller or larger. On the right side of the map, just under the header is a Previous/Next button to navigate away from the current map. A legend is at the bottom right of the page. Note: the maps have been "georectified". That is they have been designed to lay over a curved surface to more accurately depict the locations. You can change the map to a flat map but I much prefer the georectified versions. See the icon on the right side of the page under the blue menu bar.

A very cool option is the ability to turn on and off a Table of Contents, Text, and the Legend. These options are under the georectified option. The Text function gives you an extensive explanation of what the map is about. If that's not for you, uncheck the Text box and it disappears.

There are a lot of maps. If you want to research something about the United States there's a good possibility that you can find the information here. If you're researching an era, this is also an excellent start. Many maps are dated from the 1600's. Unfortunately, the map dates only run into the 1930's. Writers beware: I lost a few hours looking at the maps and imagining what was going on in the country at the time. Plot bunnies abound in these web pages.

Links Used in this article:

http://www.dsl.richmond.edu/historicalatlas/

www.IO9.com