After going through the process of geo-referencing a historical map of Northfield I realize the challenges and insights it provides. Throughout time the geography of Northfield has changed and new buildings have been added. The course of the river has changed over time and new highways have been added on the modern map. In this way, georeferencing is helpful in analyzing change over time in a specific area. Changes can occur to physical geography as well as urban development. This can provide us with information about the cultural values of societies at different periods of time.
Although the process of finding coordinates on both the historical and modern Northfield map was quite easy, this is not always the case. If there are considerable differences between the two maps, triangulating points on the respective maps might prove challenging. This can then affect the accuracy of your georectified map. Limitations exist when older maps are very obscure and the geography of the area has changed significantly over time. As discussed in class many of the maps that are incomplete in the David Rumsey Map Collection are very obscure and hard to compare to modern maps.
Knowing the context of the map and its distortions allows the user to account for this when triangulating location. For example if location is distorted on a map you would adjust your coordinates when georeferencing. If the purpose of the map is not for modern comparison, the user may not choose to georeference it as this would not provide any new insight relevant to the map.
I think this process highlighted the usefulness of georeferencing but also its limited usage. Many historical maps are for standalone purposes not to be related to today’s geography. However, I do think it is a very useful tool and can provide insight into the cultural geography of different places over time.
2 thoughts on “Blog 6 – Spatial Humanities (Aurelia Peterson Rajalingam)”
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I really like your point that georeferencing can sometimes be difficult due to the changes in geography that happen over time. I think quite a few people had trouble with accuracy in relation to how their map was overlaid. Both maps provided had some identifiable points that could be used. However, since the geography has changed slightly in certain places, there is no perfect point, which hurts the accuracy.
You bring up a great point with how problems may arise when using this technology with even older and harder to read maps. As you said, some of the older maps are obscure and hard to compare. I wonder if there is a way to automatically align the maps without the difficulty of choosing exact coordinates.