Article: Tiles as an approach to on-line publishing of scanned old maps, vedute and other historical documents

An article describing open-source tools for publishing scanned old maps and also prototypes and planned tools of our grant was published in the latest issue of e-Perimetron - the international quarterly e-journal on sciences and technologies affined to history of cartography and maps.

Summary of the article:

This paper describes a complete process of publishing of historical maps using a collection of freely available open-source tools. Special attention is being paid to the tiling approach for online map publishing to achieve compatibility with mapping web applications like Google Maps or Google Earth. Format and cartographic projection of the tiles used in such systems is described together with software projects which can be used to produce them.

The article also proposes an alternate simplified workflow for scanned old maps publishing. It is targeted on libraries and other memory institutions which are digitizing historical documents but do not have the resources for their correct geo-referencing. The web-based tools necessary for this workflow are now in the development through the OldMapsOnline.org project (http://www.oldmapsonline.org/).

Citation:

Pridal, P; Zabicka, P. (2008). 'Tiles as an approach to on-line publishing of scanned old maps, vedute and other historical documents'. e-Perimetron Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 10-21:
http://www.e-perimetron.org/Vol_3_1/Pridal_Zabicka.pdf