How the New York Public Library digitizes its vast map collection

While much of the city's mapping community is focused on creating something new, a great deal of energy also goes into recovering maps that are quite old.

The New York Public Library, the spiritual heart of the city's mapmaking community, is gradually putting online its vast collection of 435,000 maps. Using a software program called "Building Inspector," more than 1,000 users are manually inputting information or checking contained on old maps that computers can't easily handle, such as street addresses. It's arduous work—only 33,000 of the library's maps have been digitized—but so far the volunteer army has completed 1.2 million tasks and helps the library to bring old maps online much faster than it could otherwise.

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25 maps that explain the English language

From Vox.com:

English is the language of Shakespeare and the language of Chaucer. It's spoken in dozens of countries around the world, from the United States to a tiny island named Tristan da Cunha. It reflects the influences of centuries of international exchange, including conquest and colonization, from the Vikings through the 21st century. Here are 25 maps and charts that explain how English got started and evolved into the differently accented languages spoken today.

Mapping America's Libraries and Museums

"There’s always that joke that there’s a Starbucks on every corner," says Justin Grimes, a statistician with the Institute of Museum and Library Services in Washington. "But when you really think about it, there’s a public library wherever you go, whether it’s in New York City or some place in rural Montana. Very few communities are not touched by a public library.”

In fact, libraries serve 96.4 percent of the U.S. population, a reach any fast-food franchise can only dream of.

Grimes built the map during the National Day of Civic Hacking, using the agency's database of public libraries. Each of those dots refers to an individual branch library (and a few bookmobiles), out of a total of 9,000 public library systems.

More HERE.

Treasure-trove of maps headed to L.A. Public Library

From the Los Angeles Times:

When real estate agent Matthew Greenberg cleaned out the Mount Washington cottage after the occupant died, he couldn't bring himself to throw out a treasure-trove he discovered inside--all kinds of maps.

Instead, he invited the Los Angeles Public Library's map librarian to look at the find.

Stashed everywhere in the 948-square-foot tear-down were maps. Tens of thousands of maps. Fold-out street maps were stuffed in file cabinets, crammed into cardboard boxes, lined up on closet shelves and jammed into old dairy crates.

Wall-size roll-up maps once familiar to schoolchildren were stacked in corners. Old globes were lined in rows atop bookshelves also filled with maps and atlases. A giant plastic topographical map of the United States covered a bathroom wall and bookcases displaying Thomas Bros. map books and other street guides lined a small den.

The library's Glen Creason called the find unbelievable.

"I think there are at least a million maps here," he said. "This dwarfs our collection — and we've been collecting for 100 years."

Google Map Maker of the United States

Using Map Maker, people have built out and edited the maps for 183 countries and regions around the world, and now, due to the contributions of citizen cartographers, 30 percent of people have detailed online maps of the places they live.

Map Maker users have mapped entire cities, road networks and universities that were never previously recorded online. These contributions have been incorporated into Google Maps and Google Earth, so the collective expertise of the Map Maker community benefits the millions of people using these products globally.

More HERE.

Map of the Internet by Country Codes

Created by the team at Bytelevel, the map illustrates the 245 country codes, each two-digit code is aligned over the country it represents and is color coded with the legend below for quick and easy reference. The size of the letters represents the size of the country or territory (with exception of China and India, which were restrained by 30% to fit the layout).