Georeferencer for TU Darmstadt

Tuesday, December 01, 2015

Over 400 historical maps have been released by Technical University Darmstadt in a new Georeferencer pilot. The map collection of ULB has around 37.000 sheets from 16th to 20th century. Over 1.000 of them is scanned already and are coming back to the online life. Information about the project can be found at: http://www.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/spezialabteilungen/kartensammlung/georeferenzierung/index.de.jsp

georeferencer | customers

OldMapsOnline.org in Internet Scout

Monday, November 30, 2015

Map lovers will find hours and hours worth of cartographic joys on this site that draws sources from the U.S. Geological Society, the National Library of Scotland, the Land Survey Office of the Czech Republic, and many other participating institutions.  Beginning as a project between Klokan Technologies GmbH, Switzerland and The Great Britain Historical GIS Project, OldMapsOnline “aims to demonstrate a combination of tools for publishing historical maps with a focus on their easy accessibility for the general public.

Full review available at: https://scout.wisc.edu/report/2015/1127#11land and The Great Britain Historical GIS Project, OldMapsOnline “aims to demonstrate a combination of tools for publishing historical maps with a focus on their easy accessibility for the general public.

oldmapsonline

Georeferencer for Leiden University

Friday, August 28, 2015

In Leiden University, over 300 of hand-drawn manuscript maps from the collection Van Keulen have been georeferenced in the new pilot. The maps were drawn between 1704-1755.

After more then 300 years it was quite tricky to place the control points, as nearly all places are using different names and on some places the landscape shape was changed significantly as well.

More information about the project available at: http://www.library.leiden.edu/special-collections/special/maps-in-the-crowd-eng.html#participate-and-win

georeferencer | customers

OldMapsOnline - new version released

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

OldMapsOnline is a search engine for maps that allows visitors to explore and discover the beauty of historical maps depicting a past geographical place of their interest.  In the new version released in July 2015, additional maps have been added and the website already indexes over 400,000 scanned maps from collections of The British Library, National Library of Scotland, David Rumsey, Harvard Library, Dutch National Archives, Charles University in Prague, New York Public Library and other institutions worldwide. It is a well-known project in the cultural heritage sector. From its first launch in 2012, the website has had over 1,500,000.  OldMapsOnline provides a single entry point for searching maps of the same geographical location without the need to know which library holds the actual map. This is a real benefit for researchers and students because it saves their time, effort and costs.  For more information visit www.oldmapsonline.org. launch in 2012, the website has had over 1,500,000.  OldMapsOnline provides a single entry point for searching maps of the same geographical location without the need to know which library holds the actual map. This is a real benefit for researchers and students because it saves their time, effort and costs.  For more information visit www.oldmapsonline.org.

oldmapsonline

Georeferencer for State Library New South Wales

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Glad to see another Georeferencer project for State Library New South Wales in Australia. The tricky part of this project were significant changes in names of the streets, which needed the contributors with local knowledge.

Over 900 maps were successfully placed and the obtained data enriched the library catalogue with geographical locations. More information about the project is available at  http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/using/map_georeferencing.html

georeferencer | customers

IIIF viewer at The National Library of Scotland

Friday, March 06, 2015

We are glad to see our IIIF Viewer applied on various websites. IIIF Viewer is an Open-Source component brought by Klokan Technologies. IIIFViewer is optimized for desktop and mobile devices (iOS, Android), is open-source, free to use and has, compared to other viewers, the following extra features:

• Rotation on client side: pinch with fingers, alt-shift drag with the mouse.
• Drawing tools: polygons, lines, markers — can be used to annotate parts of the pictures.
• Color adjustment: saturation, lightness, etc.The source

Code is available on GitHub.

See examples of usage.

A nice example are the Maps of Scotland from the National Library of Scotland.

customers | tileserver | iiif | open-source | iipimage

Planned downtime: Saturday 17th January 2015 10am-5pm CET

Friday, December 19, 2014

We would like to give advanced notice to all our users that the infrastructure that our sites and services run on is being upgraded. This is essential maintenance and whilst it is happening Old Maps Online will be partially, and at times may be completely, unavailable.

This will occur on Saturday 17th January 2015 between 10 am and 5 pm (Central European Time).

We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

announcement

IIIF for images in cultural heritage

Monday, October 20, 2014

Online scans of culture heritage documents, such as old maps, books, photographs, etc. are being published by the galleries, libraries, archives and museums.  Until now there was no official standardisation activity in this area. This is now changing with the International Image Interoperability Framework IIIF (http://iiif.io/), which enables easy access to large raster images across institutions.

We are happy to announce a new Open Source IIIF viewer, with several useful features: 

• Rotation on client side  - pinch with fingers, Alt-Shift drag with the mouse- Drawing tools - polygons, lines, markers - used to annotate parts of the pictures- Color adjustments - saturation, lightness, etc

Demo available at: http://klokantech.github.io/iiifviewer/

The viewer is pure Java Script, mobile optimised with almost native feeling for zoom and powered by OpenLayers V3 open-source project, where we are co-developers (see blog post).

Feel free to try at: http://klokantech.github.io/iiifviewer/

Source codes are available on GitHub: https://github.com/klokantech/iiifviewer/

This viewer is another important part of the mosaic of open source tools for publishing of large images and maps. Together with high-performance open-source JPEG2000 image server can be used to serve thousands of users in a very fast and efficient way.

The mentioned server providing IIIF endpoint for the JPEG2000 images was developed and released by Klokan Technologies in cooperation with the National Library of Austria and their Google Books scanning project, the Austrian Books in 2013. The documentation is available at: https://github.com/klokantech/iiifserver/ Server software runs under Linux, Mac OS X as well as Windows. There is even an easy to use installer.  It is powered by IIPImage server and our code has been recently refactored and merged back to the main IIPImage repository.

Support and maintenance for installation of this open-source software can be provided by Klokan as well as the access to JPEG2000 Kakadu license.

The documentation is available at: https://github.com/klokantech/iiifserver/

osgeo | open-source | iipimage

Utrech University used our Georeferencer

Friday, August 15, 2014

Klokan Technologies applied Georeferencer tool for Utrecht University.

There is an important issue in the Netherlands due to climate change and sea level rise problems with water retention. The University of Utrecht has an access to the collection of maps with a strong emphasis on hydrography. Part of these maps were digitized and made accessible for a large audience.

Included in mentioned collection of over 1,500 maps and atlases is also around 300 sheets of water boards, river diversions, plans for channels, dikes etc.

This collection represents important resource for landscape research and shows maps of regions, mainly Dutch. The georeferencing of the collection was realized in April 2013. With the help of this application coordinates can rather simply be added to scanned maps. Next the georeferenced maps can be consulted by means of a KML link in Google Earth or in Georeferencer’s own viewer.

Georeferencer gives archives, libraries and institutions an affordable and simple way how to engage broader public to work and become involved in attractive map collections, provides 3D visualization of maps via Google Earth and offer amazing possibility to unite past with the present.

georeferencer | customers

Impact video now available

Wednesday, March 05, 2014

As part of the Jisc funding requirements the Old Maps Online team had to produce a video report on the impacts of the website. As the site launched early on in the life of the project there was plenty of material for inclusion in the video and lots of people willing to talk about why they like the site.

The filming was done on location at the one-day conference, Working Digitally with Historical Maps, that we organised in Edinburgh in December 2013 and we are grateful to the National Library of Scotland for allowing this.

The British Library Georeferencer: new 2800 maps!

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

In these days you have the unique opportunity to get involved and help the British Library to georeference new digitized maps, which were selected for scanning and online publishing recently.

Nearly 2800 maps are now available online and waiting for georeferencing. It is really easy process.

See this video:

and start at:  http://www.bl.uk/maps/ This release has implemented new functionality for use within social media, including better personalisation and visualisation options. It is possible to compare two old maps and create a personal map collection with the new “My Maps” function.

Klokan Technologies also prepared new Facebook application for georeferencing maps from the BL, you can participate and in the same moment compete with your FB friends: https://apps.facebook.com/georeferencer/

Moreover, involved contributors can choose from two different collections of maps, which were selected for release:

First collection represents maps of British and Irish towns and its fire insurance plans (2500 maps). This collection provides information, which you will not find somewhere else, not just about the land use, buildings, but also about the urban landscape in the late 19thc - 20th century.

Second collection consists of military maps from the World War I and US Civic War (225 maps). Among these maps you can find trench maps, campaign charts and also ethnographic mapping.

Each contributor will see his/her details and the best contributor will be publicly announced.

For more information, please follow this link: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/magnificentmaps/2013/11/2700-new-maps-online-for-georeferencing.html

georeferencer | customers | iipimage

The Austrian National Library Google Books open-source image server

Monday, November 11, 2013

The Austrian National Library scanned first 100.000 complete historical books from the beginning of 16th century until the second half of the 19th century within the project Google Books project participation. These unique historical books are now accessible online.

You can read the Press Release here: http://www.onb.ac.at/services/presse_21764.htm Klokan Technologies GmbH provided the Austrian National Library with the open-source IIPImage software for the display of scanned books from JPEG2000 format.

Klokan Technologies extended the mentioned open-source project with the implementation of IIIF protocol. Used protocol was defined by the consortium of people from Stanford University, Oxford University, British Library etc. (for more info please visit:  http://www-sul.stanford.edu/iiif/image-api/1.1/).

The IIIF image API specifies a web service that returns an image in response to a standard http or https request.

About 600.000 copyright-free works are supposed to be digitized.

customers | iipimage

FOSS4G 2013: Old Maps Online and Georeferencer

Sunday, September 22, 2013

OSGeo’s Global Conference for Open Source Geospatial Software that brings together developers of map applications from all around the world. This year the conference took place in Nottingham in the UK 17th - 21st September and Klokan Technologies was there.

You can find conference’s website at:  http://2013.foss4g.org/ and all presentations are available in the slideshow on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWW0CjV-TafaBjkroiOxcQw8NdOQ_fhu2 Anyone interested has a possibility to view the presentations from the record.

Probably the most interesting are the technical presentations about the new OpenLayers3, which is the project on which we participated and which will be used in the new version Georeferencer and StareMapy.cz.

Technical details of our work on Georeferencer and MapRank Search presented Vaclav Klusak. Afterwards, Petr Pridal spoke about the new open-source project TileServer and accessing map tiles using standard OGC WMTS.

presentations | oldmapsonline | georeferencer

Old Maps Online at the International Cartographic Conference

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Despite the funding from Jisc finishing in January this year we are still working to promote the project. Petr Přidal of Klokan Technologies recently presented a poster at the International Cartographic Conference, which this year was held in Dresden, Germany from the 25th -30th August. The poster presentation focused on the Old Maps Online project as a search system tailored to work with historical maps in a spatial way, something traditional search engines struggle with, and how implementing Georeferencer as a means to turn scanned maps into digital resources which are easy to find using crowd-sourcing helped various national libraries contribute their maps to the Old Maps Online system.

ICC | Georeferencer

Preserved for posterity

Monday, April 22, 2013

Old Maps Online has been included on a list of 100 websites considered important enough to preserve for future generations. Experts from a consortium of UK national libraries chose 100 Websites which they consider will be essential reading for those looking back at 2013. An archive of these UK based websites will be created using new powers the libraries have been given to preserve digital content.

The eclectic mix of sites on the list range from social media such as facbook and ebay, via online shopping from high street stores to housing and public interest sites such as OpenStreetMap and Galaxy Zoo. Old Maps Online is described as:

"...revolutionising the way in which we conduct historical research and will be invaluable for future researchers wishing to dive through layers of history geographically"

The project team is immensely proud to have been included in this list.

British Library: 3rd Georeferencer pilot announced

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

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.

georeferencer | customers | projects

Online reviews of Old Maps Online

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

After nearly a whole year of Old Maps Online being live we thought we'd do a quick review of blog comments mentioning the site which have been posted since the initial flurry of interest following the launch. Below are a selection of what we found people have said about actually using the site.

Edinburgh Conference: Working Digitally with Historical Maps

Tuesday, January 08, 2013

In December we journeyed north to Edinburgh to hold our second conference on Working Digitally with Historical Maps at the National Library of Scotland. People from a variety of different backgrounds attended, ranging from those already working on innovative ways to use digital historical maps, through those who have digital maps and wanted inspiration on what they could do with them to those just beginning to have an interest who wanted to see what is currently available.

The day was broken in gently at 10am with coffee and an introductory welcome. This was followed by Petr Pridal giving the key note presentation detailing the improved functionality and searching and much extended content of our own Old Maps Online site (we'll let you know when these changes have actually gone live).

Following that Session 1 looked at using technology to map

Detail from Nairn and Elgin, W. Johnson, 1832. (c) Cartography Associates

history. It started with two staff from the National Library of Scotland, Chris Fleet who detailed the improvements made to their online mapping and catalogue which make it even easier to use and search their collection, whilst Alice Heywood showed us a Moray community project where local people recorded their views on interesting places around Elgin available to visitors through a mobile app. Another mobile app was described by Chris Speed from the Edinburgh College of Art which allows users to download historical maps to compare with their modern day location through the "blue dot" location marker. Peter Munro finished off the first session by describing how the Borders Family History Society have been digitising historical personal records and then mapping addresses from them to show sometimes surprising distribution results of those receiving poor relief. Just before we stopped for lunch there was the presentation of the Bartholomew Globe to Petr Pridal by Bruce Gittings of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, you can read more details about this in our last blog post.

digital mapping | open access | presentation

Petr Přidal awarded Bartholomew Globe by Royal Scottish Geographical Society

Friday, December 14, 2012

Yesterday we held our second conference on Working Digitally with Historical Maps. The first was held at the New York Public Library in February, and saw the original launch of the Old Maps Online web site. This time we were at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh, and included the first public demonstration of the new and improved software for the site. Much more about that and the other presentations next time, but for a quick summary of the day take a look at Edina's Go-Geo blog.

One highlight of the day was a short ceremony at which Bruce Gittings, Vice-Chair of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, presented Petr Přidal, founder of Klokan Technologies and principal architect of the Old Maps Online system, with the Bartholomew Globe. Bruce is wearing the suit, and his speech follows.

"Through its publications and awards the Royal Scottish Geographical Society is pleased to acknowledge and promote notable research, development and innovation within the geographical sciences. Amongst these, the Society awards the Bartholomew Globe, which is named in honour of the notable family of Edinburgh cartographers, who worked in Duncan Street just around the corner from the NLS Map Library. This is given in recognition of an exceptional contribution to cartography, mapping and related techniques.

Today we have already heard from someone who has made a very significant and enduring contribution to online mapping, directly enabling the pioneering work undertaken here in the National Library of Scotland, and in the Moravian Library, in relation to making historical mapping available. This was followed by a significant contribution underpinning projects such as Old Maps Online.

This person is Petr Přidal. Hailing from the Czech Republic, where he gained a Masters in Applied Informatics in 2007 and he finalizes PhD in Cartography now, Petr is a software engineer whose career leaped forward through the springboard of the Google Summer of Code in 2008. He has gone on to found his own company in Switzerland - Klokan Technologies - having set himself the mission of empowering people, companies and institutions, to search, publish and enjoy the real value of the maps they own. For those of you who don't know 'Klokan' is his Czech nickname, meaning slightly bizarrely kangaroo. And there is no doubt that his work 'bounced' the traditional field of historical cartography into the 21st century, underpinning many of the projects we are hearing about today.

Petr has been responsible for innovative software tools including GDAL2Tiles, MapTiler (which permits the seamlessly rendering of maps), IIPImage which provides streaming of high-resolution images, geographical search with MapRank and crowd-sourced georeferencing with Georeferencer. He is strongly of the view that software should be free-and-open-source, and this philosophy has enabled the takeup of these valuable solutions in the often poorly-funded library sector.

It is with the greatest of pleasure I would like to present the Bartholomew Globe to Petr Přidal."

Detail from 1917 Parliamentary Boundary Commission map of Edinburgh (from A Vision of Britain through Time)

Bartholomew Globe | workshop

AHRC Digital Transformations Moot

Monday, November 26, 2012

Last Monday the project attended the AHRC-moot on Digital Transformations, held at the Mermaid Conference Centre in London. Humphrey Southall represented Old Maps Online and presented a joint display entitled 'Old Maps and the Spatial turn'. Alongside Old Maps Online, this exhibition included Kate Jones (University of Portsmouth) who was introducing the new Bomb Sight website/mobile app (another JISC funded project), Kimberly Kowal (British Library and a member of our steering group) who presented the BL Georeferencer project on which they collaborated with Klokan Technologies and Leif Isaksen (University of Southampton) who was presenting the Pelagios project which links together resources about the ancient world via a gazetteer of ancient places and YAMA a historical map annotator. There was also a display about the Georeferencer Metadata Hub from Klokan.

copyright © 2000 Cartography Associates.

The aim of this joint exhibition was to focus attention on projects working to embed historical maps into modern digital scholarship and exploit the significant general interest there is in old maps. The old map example here was published by Edward Stanford of London in 1901 and shows South East London.

For further information about the day, including a downloadable PDF of the programme see the AHRC website: http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/Funding-Opportunities/Research-funding/Themes/Digital-Transformations/Pages/Digital-Transformations-Moot.aspx

Bomb Sight | Georeferencer