10 May 2013
Ordnance Surveyors’ Drawings opened for reuse
The Library’s unique collection of Ordnance Surveyors’ Drawings is now available under new terms, making the maps freely accessible and usable in digital tools.
The Ordnance Surveyors’ Drawings (OSDs), compiled between 1789 and c.1840, represent the first continuous topographic mapping of England and Wales and are the most detailed record of the landscape preceding full-scale industrialisation in the mid-19th century. These original manuscript maps, drawn primarily at scales of ca. 1:21,120 and 1:31,680, with coastal areas of military significance at ca. 1:10,560, depict the whole of Wales and England south of an east-west Preston-Hull line.
Detail of OSD 267(pt.2). Ordnance Surveyors’ Drawings. Boyce, draughtsman. 1814
Though these ink-on-paper drawings formed the cartographic basis for the first published Ordnance Survey one-inch mapping, they contain topographic details not captured in the smaller-scale, printed series. The detail above of the 1814 OSD 267(pt.2) was drawn at a scale of two-inches-to-the-mile and indicates field boundaries, land cover, water courses, relief, roads and footpaths, and built features, including the presence of stone walls, drawn here in red.
Detail of Sheet 64. Ordnance Survey, Old series, First ed. 1:63,360. 1824
In contrast, the published sheet above in the First Ed (Old Series), printed in 1824 and based on the OSD, was by necessity generalised, due to the smaller scale (one-inch-to-the-mile) and limitation to black-and-white.
The OSDs were georeferenced in 2012, and partly as a result of the immense success of that public crowdsourcing effort – BL Georeferencer - scanned images of the maps have been “opened up” for reuse under an Open Government Licence. A small sample of four OSD images have been posted to Wikimedia Commons here. The remaining 400 or so will follow; if you wish to be notified when it is complete, contact [email protected]
Another exciting development with these maps is their inclusion in British Library Labs, a new project supporting research and development with BL digital data that offers direct curatorial and financial support, including an expenses-paid residency at the British Library. We are hoping that researchers and developers with an interest in cartographic history and geospatial data will participate, and we'll see these maps put to new and dynamic uses online!
01 February 2013
BL Georeferencer - maps go like hotcakes
02 November 2012
Annoucing BL Georeferencer champions
All the maps in this latest round of BL Georeferencer were completed yesterday, 1 Nov, thus producing second lot of of the Library's historic maps that know where they belong. A related result was the amicable conclusion of the weeklong point leapfrogging between the two top participants, Sue White and Maurice Nicholson.
A heartfelt "thank you" to Sue and Maurice for their dedicated work! In what must have been mutual design or compromise, each contributed precisely 3,300 points over the course of the six days. This impressive number is evident in the high quality of the georeferencing they produced, and will be enjoyed by users overlaying the maps in future.
This Christopher Saxton map of Kent, Sussex, Middlesex and Surrey was assigned a mind-boggling 398 points, more than any other map!
A quarter of the maps were georeferenced with 3-5 points, with more than half of the maps sporting between 6 and 30 points. Less - ~18% - have between 30 and 100 points at present, such as this 1928 OS map of the south west coast of Wales (38 points).
Thanks to all the volunteers that assisted in the BL Georeferencer effort. We will see their work added to Old Maps Online in future, where maps from numerous collections can be searched geographically and by time. Before that, however, we have some error-checking that I'll be looking for help with... stay tuned!
30 October 2012
Difficult maps
Sometimes the map that's leftover, that no else wants to decipher, is the most valuable to georeference.
In my periodic checks on BL Georeferencer http://www.bl.uk/maps/, I've noticed that the more opaque, difficult to discern maps are avoided - and this is entirely understandable! Associating the places that appear on historic maps with their current geographic location on the ground can be straightforward, but not always. Here are a few of those more demanding:
This 16th c. drawing required reading the title and description to get any idea of where or what it was - there is no text on the map!
This ca 1600 map of Shopshire is nicely labelled, but requires some interpretation. Shewsbury is labelled "Salop", an historical name for the city, and scale varies over the map: the loop of the river on which the city is located is of an inordinately large scale, but this emphasises its prime geographic feature making it firmly recognisable.
Thanks to Steven Feldman for taking on these two.
Below are a couple I am less certain will make it...
Numerous maps from the Kensington Turnpike Trust are available, and all seem to be difficult to move. This, sheet 6, has even less information than most!
No one has dared attempt this estate map of "the manors of Mincingbury, Abbotsbury and Hoares, in Barley, Hertfordshire." If anyone can figure where this might be located, please help!
What makes the difficult maps especially valuable to georeference is their very obscurity; because most folks will not know what they represent, they are made less useful. Once their location is known, they are able to be found and used as maps.
My thanks and admiration go out those participants in the BL Georeferncer project that accept the challenging maps!
26 October 2012
Chance to georeference maps online!
It was only this morning that a new set of 700 maps was opened to the public for georeferencing, but this afternoon I am overwhelmed at the interest we've received. Participating individuals examined the scanned maps closely - many of which were not easy to decipher, being of an earlier and more "characterful" sort - and, using an online gazetteer and map, found and assigned their locations. Amazing.
There is plenty left to do. Please give it a try!
Once a map has been georeferenced with this tool, it may be viewed overlaid on the landscape, and each participant is credited for the number of points they submit.
But it is not all about immediate gratification and competition! Georeferencing these maps extends their usability and findability, and allows visualisation in new ways using popular geospatial tools. The British Library has tremendous collections of historic maps that, without georeferencing, lack visibility via digital technologies, so we decided to crowd-source the activity. All the data created from this effort will be used for enhanced searching; the results of our initial pilot (thanks to those volunteers) have already been applied in Old Maps Online (http://oldmapsonline.org) and we have plans for our own uses.
27 February 2012
Success in "placing" historic maps
The crowdsourcing effort described in my last post was, I am happy to say, complete in less than one week. Many thanks to all that participated! Maurice Nicholson of Bedford submitted the most maps, and he will be in for a visit to the British Library in a couple of weeks.
Below is a visualisation of the maps completed (before any error-checking!)
All of the maps in the project are still open for editing. Adding more points - spread across the entire map - will improve the accuracy of the data. From here, simply click on the red marker representing the map you wish to edit to enter the Georeferencer tool. If you have local knowledge of an area, we'd appreciate you reviewing what's there to ensure the best fit and minimise errors.
Because of the quick work, the newly-georeferenced maps were integrated into the JISC-funded Old Maps Online, in which The British Library is partnering, in time for its launch. More on that soon...
Get in touch via [email protected] if you wish to be contacted when the next batch of maps is ready for georeferencing.
14 February 2012
Georeferencing maps online - will it work?
We're asking the online public to undertake a task beyond our own means: to georeference some of our treasures of British mapping. http://maps.bl.uk
The maps included represent a very small sample, to be sure. But the the Ordnance Survey Drawings are some of the most enquired-after maps we have, being unique manuscript documents that portray the lanscape of England and Wales before the onslaught of industrialisation made its mark.
This is a detail of OSD 40, pt. 3. In 1801, Exeter was a small and compact town!
The other collection we've included in this effort is a selection of the Crace Collection of Maps of London. I've found these maps to be more difficult to georeference, and am eager to see how others fare with them.
The project web page is http://maps.bl.uk - there is a short video there and detailed instructions. Access is also available from within the map pages in the Online Gallery. Please try this new tool out, as it will be a great help towards improving access to and visibility of these collections!
Maps and views blog recent posts
- George III's maps and views: 32,000 images released on Flickr Commons
- Adding 1,277 East African maps to Georeferencer
- Maps on the British Library's Online Gallery: update
- The K.Top: 18,000 digitised maps and views released
- Goad Maps on Layers of London
- Another big list of where to find British Library maps online
- A list of where to find free-to-access digitised British Library maps
- Hooked on Georeferencing
- Less of a Random Mapper: a new feature for Georeferencer
- Money for old charts: printing maps in the nineteenth century
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