Historical maps in ScotlandsPlaces: new collaborative geographic retrieval  and presentation options for the National Library of Scotland's maps

Fleet, Chris

Historical maps in ScotlandsPlaces: new collaborative geographic retrieval and presentation options for the National Library of Scotland's maps

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Journal article

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Fleet, Chris

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Date published

2011

Abstract

ScotlandsPlaces (www.scotlandsplaces.gov.uk) is a collaborative web portal allowing access to geographic records and images held by three institutions: the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments for Scotland (RCAHMS); the National Archives of Scotland (NAS); and the National Library of Scotland (NLS). ScotlandsPlaces was first launched in October 2009 with records from RCAHMS and NAS, but in December 2010, 18,000 map records and images from NLS were incorporated. This paper describes the main work involved in incorporating NLS historical maps into ScotlandsPlaces, and the benefits of doing so, including the practical advantages for the user in terms of access and presentation, the advantages for NLS in improving georeferencing of maps, and the economic advantages of sharing institutional resources in this collaborative application. It also reviews the improvements to geographic access to historical maps through map, gazetteer, and county / parish based search methods in ScotlandsPlaces, and describes the various open standards and services employed, including Web Map Services, Zoomify and Openlayers software, and KML search results. The planned enhancements to ScotlandsPlaces, including an e-commerce facility and a mobile application, are also discussed.