GIS - Part 2

Two new projects utilize Google Maps and historical photography to create composite views of contemporary city streets. The Museum of London‘s free mobile application, Streetmuseum, combines GPS and photographs from the museum’s collections to create an interactive visual exploration of London history.

Hold your camera up to the present day street scene and the same London location appears on your screen, offering you a window through time. Want to know more? Simply tap the information button for historical facts.

Historypin, a web-based project created by We Are What We Do in partnership with Google, pairs viewer-submitted photographs and their geographical coordinates with Google Street View, allowing for multiple snapshots of the same space throughout time. Viewers can also submit personal stories about specific places.

Please join us this Thursday (4/15, 12pm, Rosenwald 405) for a lunchtime TechTalk on “Geospatial Tools for Humanities Research.”

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are powerful tools which combine current information with historical and modern maps for analytic and presentation purposes. VRC student staff member Helen-Mary Sheridan will present an overview of fundamental GIS concepts and present a range of current examples of their use in the humanities, including annotated atlases, a map for tracking geospatial components in literary collections, and (geo)spatial analyses of paintings.

Humanities Computing TechTalks are informal, brown bag style events for learning more about current technology topics relevant to the humanities. TechTalks are free and open to all university faculty, staff and students.

For a current list of future TechTalks, please goto the Humanities Division events calendar and search by sponsor “Computing.”