NYPL Blogs: Posts from the Map Division

The New York City Historical GIS Project

Matt Knutzen, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Map Division — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 12:39:55 -0400

In 2010, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awarded The New York Public Library's Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division a three-year grant for its New York City Historical Geographic Information Systems project, which builds digital cartographic resources from NYPL's historical paper map and atlas collections.

The project walks a portion of NYPL's New York City map collections through a series of workflow steps outlined in a previous blog post, Unbinding the Atlas. In a nutshell, maps are scanned (shooting a high resolution digital image), georectified (a.k.a. warped, rubber-sheeted, i.e. aligning pixels on an old map to latitude/longitude on a virtual map), cropped (removing extraneous non-map information from the collar area around a map), and digitized (think of this as tracing).

In the proposal, we committed to scanning 9,000 maps, but we were ultimately funded to image approximately 7,200 maps. Work has proceeded much faster than anticipated, however, enabling us to scan and mount 7,799 new maps so far. An additional 9,327 metadata records have been created for related collections, such as all of New York City’s zoning maps (a bibliography can be found at the bottom of this great post, or in this .doc file) dating to 1916; most of our public domain fire insurance atlases of areas outside of the city in New York and New Jersey; and our entire run of historical and contemporary New York state topographic maps. If the pace of imaging continues as expected, the project will have funded the digitization of 17,126 historical maps, most of which are concentrated on the five boroughs, but with significant coverage of upstate New York and New Jersey. The scanned maps can be found in a number of places, starting with the Library's Digital Gallery. We've also put together a collection guide. One of the richest veins of recently-imaged content — over 5,000 of our most detailed maps produced by the Sanborn Map Company — can also be found in the Digital Gallery. A favorite example is the atlas, whose gorgeous and graphically-complex index page, above left, shows a Brooklyn that has yet to fill in the scaffold of projected urban grid. A pleasant discovery in this was plate 175, below right, documenting what must be one of the only elephant-shaped buildings in the world — in this case an elephant bazaar, which once occupied the area on the north side of Surf Avenue, across from the Cyclone. (Explore the elephant and the elephant bazaar >>)

Once the maps are scanned, they are available for georectification, which happens using our web-based toolkit at maps.nypl.org. If you're interested in learning how to georectify maps, you're welcome to participate in this project. The home page includes a how-to instruction video, along with a more involved instruction sheet. There are also instructions on map cropping, a necessary step in the creation of map mosaics. We're also thrilled that our friend Liz Barry at the Parsons School of Design's Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science has published this excellent instruction as part of her syllabus. If you'd like to take your work a step further and know a thing or two about Geographic Information Systems (GIS), you can follow her instructions for using maps from maps.nypl.org in ArcGIS, the industry standard GIS software. We've made great progress in georectifying NYC maps, warping about 2,400 sheets from some 162 atlases in total.

The image below shows some of the resulting georectified map layers from the project, including William Perris's Maps of the City of New York, 1857-1862; G.W. Bromley’s Atlas of the city of New York, Borough of Queens,… 1909; the Bronx Topographical Survey’s Topographic Survey and New Street System of the Borough of the Bronx…; G.M. Hopkins’s Detailed Estate and Old Farm Line Atlas of the City of Brooklyn, 1880; and G.W. Bromley’s Atlas of the City of New York, Borough of Richmond, Staten Island, 1917.

If you love map georectification, it's likely you'll also love map tracing. This is, as I pointed out in a previous post, where the proverbial rubber meets the road in terms of working with historical maps. If map warping is preparing pixels of digital images of old maps to relate to one another geospatially, map tracing is preparing machine readable data to be harvested, mined, analyzed, mashed, made a part of the semantic web, and related to itself, across time. We've created a handy guide to map tracing, if you're inclined to help us build this valuable resource. This type of data will eventually allow you to ask your phone a question, such as, "I'm standing in front of the Coney Island Cyclone. What other attractions would I see if I was here 100 years ago?" Ideally, you'd be presented with a reasonable answer, such as, "On the other side of the street, you'd see the colossal elephant bazaar that stood from 1885 to 1896," etc. And you might just see images like the items highlighted below.

The last part of the NYC Historical GIS project is tracing, and we've done quite a bit of it through our own efforts, through partnerships with local colleges and through our Citizen Cartography workshop series. At the bottom of this post are some of the resulting datasets that require a bit of explanation. The large majority of maps we're working with in this project are called fire insurance maps. They were designed to give insurance adjusters a reasonable metric by which to assign fire insurance values to buildings. They did so by documenting, among many other things, each building structure's street address, construction materials (e.g. wood, brick, etc.), the property's height (in stories), and the location of fire hydrants, as well as the general locations and width of water mains (to gauge available water pressure levels at each hydrant location). The goal of the project is to trace from a series of atlases all of the buildings' spatial footprints and transcribe all of the accompanying feature data. The "why" is explained at length in my earlier post.

The short explanation is that, while these types of maps are no longer used for fire insurance, they find continued relevance among our readers and, in truth, among any number of users along a spectrum of popular and scholarly domains. Realistically, anybody doing a bit of historical and geographic detective work can find these maps and their contents useful. And having this data as searchable (i.e. machine readable) information both breathes new life into these wonderful historical documents and enables their use in a wider, linked-data universe.

The three images below show a set of building footprint data derived from William Perris's first edition Maps of the City of New York, published in a 98 sheet, seven volume series between 1852-1854. The data was traced at maps.nypl.org, cleaned up using what are called regular expressions and a tool called Google Refine. The resulting data was then loaded into Google Fusion tables, where it was stylized. The image below (at top) shows the map data from the Perris atlas colored based on the attributes in the "material type" field. The image below (center) is of exact same data, but filtered to only show buildings that are Mixed Use (residential and commercial), those places where small business people — sole proprietors — lived, either in a back apartment or upstairs, and ran some sort of business from home. The image below (at bottom) is again the same data, but filtered again to show only Mixed Use buildings that are also framed (wooden). This type of filtering and potential for analysis of building data is a powerful means to explore and understand the historical city and is really at the core of the NYC Historical GIS project. Taking a step back, this type of methodology, i.e. moving paper, analog collections from the material to the digital world and making them machine readable, queriable, linkable, and generally more intelligent and more than the sum of their parts, is at the core of much of the exciting work being done by NYPL Labs, on the web (the Google Books Ngram Viewer, for example), and in the wider world of the digital scholarship.

So, if you're interested in learning more, please come to NYPL's Map Division or join us for a Citizen Cartography workshop.

Wiki Gangs of New York: Editathon Recap

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 07:07:38 -0400

It was time to represent New York City and the Wikipedians showed up in force to do so! Wiki Gangs of New York was a Wikipedia editathon which took place at the Stephen A Schwarzman building on April 21, 2012 using the specialized collections of the Milstein Division of U.S. History, Local History and Genealogy and the Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division. With so much great material on hand to reference, Wikipedia grew with specialized local information about New York.

Wiki Gangs of New York is the second editathon that NYPL has coordinated with the Wikimedia New York City chapter, following the success of Wikipedia! The Musical! which took place at the Library of the Performing Arts. Wikipedia volunteer and liaison Richard (Wikipedia user ID Pharos) was on hand again to coordinate with NYPL. A healthy mix of expert Wikipedians and newbies edited a total of twenty-two Wikipedia articles. The Queens Borough Historian, Jack Eichenbaum, even dropped by for a couple of hours to assist with specific questions.

There was a great deal of interest in subway lines and parkways, neighborhoods in Queens, Coney Island attractions of the past, as well as public spaces in New York. Check out the impressive work done on these articles and see if there is anything you'd like to add:

Gilded Love: Stokes and Sargent

Lindsy Serrano, Mulberry Street Branch Library — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 12:15:42 -0400

The last time I was in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, being classy, I literally stopped in my tracks when I saw this painting:

It's called Mr. and Mrs. I.N. Phelps Stokes and it was painted by John Singer Sargent in 1897 during the couple's honeymoon. I'm not sure what stuck me about this painting. Maybe it was the wife's confident pose, or the way her husband stood behind her in the shadows. At that time, they were just two people in a painting to me, I had no idea who they actually were.

A few months later, I was shelving new books and saw that same painting staring back at me on the cover of Jean Zimmerman's latest book Love, Fiercely: a Gilded Age Romance.

Zimmerman was looking for the painting because of her interest in the husband, Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes. An architect by trade, Stokes received notoriety due to his massive text on the history of early Manhattan called The Iconography of Manhattan Island, which was six volumes and 3,254 pages. It has to be the most comprehensive collection of maps and information about early New York and checkit out, NYPL HAS A COPY. Zimmerman wanted to see the man behind the books and was instead drawn in by his wife, Edith. I assume this happened to Isaac a lot during their marriage.

Edith was one of the "It girls" at the turn of the century in New York. Born to a prominent family in Staten Island, Edith was known for her beauty, high sprits and grace. She was fiercly independent (she didn't marry until the "old" age of 28) and literally became the face of a generation when Daniel Chester French sculpted her for Chicago's Columbian Exposition.

Together, Isaac and Edith had one of the era's most progressive and loving marriages. They worked together to help New York's poorest and were an inspiration to those around them. And to people like me, who at first thought that they were just an interesting couple hanging in the Met.

Unbinding the Atlas: Working with Digital Maps

Matt Knutzen, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Map Division — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 03:08:58 -0500

NYPL has now scanned nearly all of its public domain New York City atlases (a collection of now more than 10,000 maps, the wonderfully graphical title page at left is from a recently scanned Sanborn atlas of Staten Island) and built a web tool (blog post announcement) where users both inside and outside the Library can virtually stretch old maps onto a digital model of the world à la Google Maps or OpenStreetMap, thus creating a new copy that is not only aligned with spatial coordinates on the Earth, but normalized across the entire archive of old maps. And once we’ve done that, we can walk this digital spatial object through a workflow, adding useful information and context with each step. All of this is done collaboratively, through the piecemeal efforts of staff, volunteers, and interns, a group of roughly 1,500 participants worldwide.

It’s helpful to think of this type of work in terms of moving or changing contexts. A book is a linear intellectual object that has a particularly bibliographic context… a start, a sequence of pages, and an end. An atlas is a type of book within this framework that also has geographic and spatial contexts, that is, its pages have a frame of reference (earth) and therefore relate to one another spatially, through adjacency, proximity, scale, and coverage area. In the process of aligning old maps, we’re rearranging the atlas, transforming it from a linear, bibliographic object into one that is more true to its spatial nature. Below is a sketch outline of the processes we perform on maps to recontextualize them as spatial digital objects.

Map Warping

Imagine we’ve taken a photograph of a map. By simply looking at that map, we can access our own geographic knowledge base, through visually scanning its shapes, curves, and contours, by reading the title, or by decoding the various symbols that appear throughout. When we make a digital image of a map, there is nothing inherently geographic about it. It, like a photograph of a person or building, is a mass of pixels of varying color. A computer cannot presently look at pixels on a map and divine its geographic locale. This is where map warping comes into the picture. Using the tool we’ve created at maps.nypl.org, we enable users to geolocate pixels on a map. By inserting a virtual pushpin on the pixels that represent a location (e.g. Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street) and then inserting a virtual pushpin on that same geographic location, but on a digital map (e.g. Google Maps), we create a relationship between pixel space of the image of a map and the geographic space of a digital model of the earth. Once we’ve compiled a series of these pushpin equivalencies (three at the very least), we can create a new derivative work from the original digital photograph of a map, one that is spatially aware from the perspective of a computer. The image at right is John Montrésor's 1775 A Plan of the city of New-York, originally surveyed 1766, in the foment of pre-revolutionary America, undergoing the warping process, with color coded virtual pushpins tying pixel to geographical space.

This makes it possible to create really cool visualizations and map overlays (see Montrésor's map, at left) in applications like Google Earth (Montrésor's map for those who have GE installed) and more importantly, to create visual spatial histories of your locale of interest. We can also easily compare maps of the same place that might not be at the same scale, might not have the same title, or might be from atlases where the page schemas are completely at odds with one another. All of these issues, bound so to speak in earlier bookish iterations (as atlases), are mitigated through this process.

Map Cropping

Map warping further allows us to create new mosaic-like copies of larger works, like this fire insurance atlas published by G. W. Bromley in 1909, seen at right with its 47 map sheets as a unified whole. Before creating a composite image we need to crop away all of the extraneous marginalia, that is, the non-cartographic information that usually frames a map. Maps can be cropped individually and, if part of an atlas, viewed together with their adjacent neighbor maps. Think of cropping as like applying a map-coverage-area shaped cookie cutter to rolled out map dough, then resizing and assembling those pieces into a unified whole. Here's a handy guide to help walk you through Map Warping and Cropping.

Map Tracing

Once we’ve warped a map or warped and cropped an atlas, we can proceed to tracing. This is the final step necessary in transforming printed cartographic materials, maps, and atlases, into machine-readable data. For those whose eyes just glazed over, here it is put another way. This is the final step necessary in creating the means to build a time machine. Remember in the Matrix, how everything we know and see is a simulation created from digital information? Well, what if these maps and all the information on them are the building blocks of an arguably less insidious, historical and spatial research environment to be woven together with documents from the past? We believe they are, but we need to first harvest all of their information through tracing. The map at left is a composite image taken from William Perris' 1852 Maps of the City of New York and is the first to comprehensively detail the built environment of Manhattan. This particular section shows where the Brooklyn Bridge would eventually attach to Manhattan and those buildings, both their spatial geometries and their attributes (e.g. street names and addresses), that would be removed for the bridge construction. Here's a guide to help walk you through Map Tracing.

Implications and Ramifications

So, what does this all mean? If we have documents related to past times and past places (old maps), then we can create data to “rebuild” those past times and past places. And if we “rebuild” old places in virtual space, we can then organize a universe of other information around those old places. Wouldn’t it be great to have yelp.com and menupages.com, but for old restaurants and with old menus and prices? Or to have at least a smattering of old photos in a historical street view? Or to search the National Newspaper Digitization Project using a map interface? At the core of all of these dream-like research futures is geographic information, in machine-readable format. And to get there, we need to warp, crop, mosaic, and trace our old maps. That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing. And as a positive byproduct, the maps just so happen to become more useful at each step along the way.

So if you’re interested in participating in this long-term, collaborative research project, one that accretes little bits of new information to a collectively held historical knowledge base, free and open to all… let us know, or start in on it now by creating an account at maps.nypl.org. Here again are the instructions for Map Warping and Cropping and Map Tracing. Stay tuned for the next post, where we'll talk about some of the projects that use these tools, including the NYPL's own New York City Historical GIS Project, a grant funded by The National Endowment for the Humanities.

Islam in Europe: A Resource Guide at NYPL

Raymond Pun, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, General Research Division — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 05:08:03 -0500

According to the BBC News, "Islam is widely considered Europe's fastest growing religion, with immigration and above average birth rates leading to a rapid increase in the Muslim population." There are currently over 15 million Muslims (Sunni and Shiite) living in Europe and Islam is currently the second largest religion in the world after Christianity.

This blog post will focus on NYPL’s rich collection on the history of Islam in Europe: past and present; the historical, political, cultural, and economic relationships between the states of Europe and the Middle East concerning multiculturalism, integration, segregation, gender and democracy.

The Islamic faith arrived in the European continent from the Arabian Peninsula as early as the 12th century through religious migrations and trades from the Silk Road, an ancient route that connected to Asia.

During the Middle Ages, European-Christian armies and Muslims waged a series of religious warfare against each other. Known as the "Crusades," these holy wars were fought throughout Europe and the Middle East to liberate Jerusalem from Muslim rule. Some countries such as Spain and Malta were also ruled by Muslims. From the 7th to the 13th century, this period was also known as the "Golden Age" because of the scientific advancements, cultural achievements and literary contributions that greatly shaped the history and civilization of Spain and beyond.

In 15th century Spain, some people, particularly Jewish people spoke a unique Sephardic language called "Ladino" - a mix of Hebrew, Spanish and Arabic. During this time, the Spanish Inquisition under the order of Ferdinand II and Isabella I took place; this national policy forced Muslims and Jews to leave Spain or covert to Catholicism.

During the late 19th century, the Ottoman Empire slowly lost influence and power in the Middle East; it had dominated the region for five centuries. As a result of the decline, the European powers took the opportunity to access these territories. By the end of World War I, the empire dissolved (1923) and the British and French forces took over the Middle East. This caused further political strife which inevitably created and formed new (and revived old) nation states from the shackles of imperialism such as present-day Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Palestine, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, (north) Yemen, Qatar, and Turkey.

Today as the political conflicts and revolutions in the Middle East emerge, scholars, journalists and politicians have been discussing these external concerns affecting the world. As many Africans and Middle Easterners are migrating to Europe, the issues of immigration and discrimination, multiculturalism, and gender and religious rights in Europe are being also discussed and analyzed. From Turkey's attempt to be part of the European Union to the Chechen communities in Eastern Europe and Russia, the NYPL has an extensive research collection to get you started.

To find basic resources at NYPL, search the Library's catalog under keyword for "Islam and Europe" or type in a specific country: "Islam and France" and this should narrow down your search results. For a more advanced search, switch keyword to subject and type in "Islam -- (Country of your Choice)." This may give you other sources not listed in the keyword search. You can also narrow down your search by format, location, language or time period. For a brief bibliography, check the list below.

In May 2009, for one week, LIVE from The NYPL hosted a series of academic and cultural discussions entitled, "Islam in Europe: Insult: Fractured States?" on the impact of Islam in Europe in the 21st century. Notable speakers included the Her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan as well as prominent journalists, politicians and scholars; subjects of discussions included immigration, religion and society, religious, civil and women’s rights.

Selected Primary Sources at NYPL

al-Sharq al-Awsat: "The international daily newspaper of the Arabs" published in London in Arabic.
PressDisplay: Provides access to current newspapers from around the world in full-color, full-page format. Includes over 1,000 U.S. and international titles. Read this NYPL blog entry for details about this resourceful database. (Also available from home).
British Newspapers: 1600-1900: Offers researchers with the most comprehensive collection of national and regional newspapers of Victorian Britain. For those conducting research on the British Empire or Victorian culture, they will find this database to be useful.
Historical International Newspapers from Europe and the Middle East available in the Microform Reading Room: for a list, check this page. (Please note that most historical international newspapers must be requested in advance, see here.)
To read current international newspapers such as The Independent (U.K.), The Times (England), Le Monde (France), El Pais (Spain), Frankfurter Allgemeine (Germany), Corriere Della Sera (Italy), please go to the DeWitt Wallace Periodicals Reading Room in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building.
For more digital newspapers from Europe or the Middle East, check out this list. To learn more about researching historical newspapers, read this NYPL blog entry.
Le Monde des Religions is a French bimonthly periodical that focuses on religious traditions and spiritualities in the European continent.
Arab Historian Crusades / selected and translated from the Arabic sources by Francesco Gabrieli; translated from the italian by E.J. Costello - offers the perspectives and accounts of Arab historians viewing and documenting the Crusades.
Napoleon in Egypt chronicles the French invasion in Egypt through the eyes of a French officer and an Arab historian.
For maps, prints and images of Europe and the Middle East, check out NYPL's Digital Gallery and also check out the Map Division.
Learn more about the Islamic faith through NYPL's Three Faiths Online Exhibition>>

Selected Secondary Sources at NYPL

Why the French don't like Headscarves: Islam, the State, and Public Space by John Bowen examines the controversy behind the French government's banning of the veil and other religious symbols in public schools as it infringes on religious freedom.
Politics of The Veil by Joan Wallach Scott - Similar to Bowen's work, Scott explores "the long history of racism behind the law as well as the ideological barriers thrown up against Muslim assimilation in France."
What I Believe by Tariq Ramadan - Ramadan is "among the leading Islamic thinkers in the West, with a large following around world. In this work, he calls on Western Muslims to escape the mental, social, cultural, and religious ghettos they have created for themselves and become full partners in the democratic societies in which they live. At the same time, he calls for the rest to recognize our Muslim neighbors as citizens with rights and responsibilities the same as ours ..."
White Teeth by Zadie Smith - a novel that explores the issues of multiculturalism in London through the lens of two families. Smith also spoke at LIVE from the NYPL on Speaking in Tongues.
Muslims in the West: From Sojourners to Citizens edited by Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad is a collection of essays that "studies the impact of the growing Muslim population on Western societies, and how Muslims are adapting to life in the West."
Heretic and Hero: Muhammad and the Victorians by Phillip C. Almond examines the Victorian impressions and images of the Prophet Muhammad.
For more on Islamic Spain >>
For more on the Ottoman Empire>>
For more on Medieval Europe >>
For a more in-depth list of academic titles on this subject >>
For a current index of scholarly articles on Islam in World History, consider Index Islamicus>>
For scholarly articles on the contemporary and historical research on Islam and Europe, check out the following databases: JSTOR, Project Muse, ATLA Religion and Academic Search Premier. For more databases>>

All Hands on Deck: NYPL Turns to the Crowd to Develop Digital Collections

Vicky Gan, Intern, Strategic Planning Office — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 12:51:48 -0400

Users are generating that reality every day at The New York Public Library through two landmark crowdsourcing endeavors, What’s on the Menu? and Map Rectifier. The former enlists the public in the transcription of historical menus, and the latter allows users to “rectify” historical maps by overlaying them on modern ones. Both projects stand out amid a glut of competitors as refreshingly guilt-free and subliminally educational uses of online time. With every menu transcribed and map rectified, users are supporting research in the humanities.

In the time it takes to deploy an angry bird, a user can identify and transcribe a dish dating back to the mid-nineteenth century. The recipe for the menu project is simple — click, type, submit, repeat — and has proven a runaway success, yielding almost half a million plates of Blue Points, porterhouses, croquettes, et al. The average visit to What’s on the Menu? is slightly under eight minutes and thirty page clicks long — an eternity on the web — and patrons are hungry for more. The initial release of 8,700 digitized menus was provisionally transcribed in just four months. NYPL recently ramped up digitization efforts to meet demand.

“There’s some kind of thrill about it,” observes Rebecca Federman, project curator and culinary collections librarian at NYPL. “Menus have an everyday nature but are also extraordinary.” They are extraordinarily rare; most restaurants scrap them after each service. Menus are a form of ephemera — printed materials, such as flyers, posters, and programs, that were not meant to be kept. They reveal the past through its quotidian details and prove, dish by dish, that we are what we eat.

For the transcriber, the collection is a treasure trove of little discoveries — the antiquated use of “farinaceous” instead of today’s “pasta”; the remarkable preponderance of oyster dishes; the revelation that steaks cost twenty-five cents, not twenty-five dollars. For the scholar, it is an invaluable source of historical data. Author William Grimes used the collection to produce a culinary history of New York. Texas A&M marine biologist Glenn Jones scoured seafood menus to study fish populations. What’s on the Menu? has also inspired users outside the academic sphere. Chefs Mario Batali and Rich Torrisi are fans of the project, and a fourth-grade class in Texas has been transcribing menus as a typing exercise. By codifying and enhancing digital collections, crowdsourcing spawns new applications for historical information.

NYPL’s Geospatial librarian, Matt Knutzen, is excited about crowdsourcing’s potential for the map collection. “You can study anything through geography, through a spatial lens,” he says. Using NYPL’s Map Rectifier, amateur cartographers align old maps with current ones to “create a historical framework for geographical information.” The maps convey much more than the locations of roads and landmarks; each layer incorporates multidisciplinary data to illuminate a specific period in a region’s development. Demographic data could chart patterns of migration. Nautical data could track changes in a harbor’s bathometry. Maps of defunct factories could have real-world implications for environmental remediation. “We’re not positioning ourselves to answer those questions,” says Knutzen. “We’re enabling people to find those answers.”

The Map Rectifier has already made a concrete impact in Haiti. In 2010, the Library contributed historical maps and georectification software to the Haiti OpenStreetMap used by earthquake aid workers. Citizen cartographers the world over collaborated to create an open-source map with up-to-date information on Haiti’s resources and infrastructure. NYPL added layers of data that helped rescue teams locate victims and coordinate relief efforts. In its way, crowdsourcing helped save lives.

Ben Vershbow sees many more such surprises down the road. Vershbow is the director of NYPL Labs, the Library’s experimental digital humanities unit. According to Vershbow, cultural heritage institutions are at last starting to step more boldly into the collaborative web. “After testing the waters on third-party services like Flickr Commons,” he says, “we are beginning to see libraries, museums, and other organizations investing in their own tools and communities, and going deeper with particular collections.” While enthusiastic about drawing users more directly into library initiatives, he is quick to note that crowdsourcing is not a goal in itself but a “solution to particular sorts of problems,” and can often open up a host of new challenges. “In asking for the public’s help in extracting the menus data,” he says, “we are making an implicit promise to do something interesting and useful with it. That means more investment in technology and in library staff dedicated to overseeing, growing, and explaining the menu database. What it means fundamentally,” Vershbow continues, “is re-imagining the very roles of librarians and curators, positioning them not only as custodians of physical collections, but as leaders of online communities.”

NYPL Labs staff are already on the hunt for their next “blockbuster” project. They’re considering collections to be tagged, transcribed, and curated by the public. They’re floating ideas for “maker sites,” which would allow users to create new media using items from NYPL’s Digital Gallery. They envision, in the distant future, a fully searchable, cross-referenced map of historical information — an online time machine. Click on a restaurant to pull up its 1902 menu. Pinpoint a teacher who lived on Mott Street. See the shows from the Lyceum Theatre’s opening night.

“It’s uncharted territory,” says Vershbow. And that’s what’s so thrilling about it.

Start Traveling with the Help From NYPL’s Periodical Collections!

Raymond Pun, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, General Research Division — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 14:08:09 -0400

Sick of NYC’s cold weather? Got the traveling bug in you? Why not stop by the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building to check out our latest travel magazines for the newest tips, trips, and activities abroad? With over 100 international, regional and local traveling magazines, the DeWitt Wallace Periodicals Division can help you plan your next destinations!

We have magazines from Alaska to Florida; from Seattle to Philadelphia; from Boston to San Diego and everything in between: state and city! If you are planning a trip soon or not sure where or what to do, these magazines also cover current events, leisurely activities and entertainment for the entire family. We also subscribe to periodicals from San Francisco, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Portland, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Santa Barbara, New Orleans, New York, Nevada, Cleveland, Vermont, Santa Fe, Oklahoma, Palm Beach, Connecticut, New Jersey and Washington D.C.; just to name a few. One can leisurely browse through over fifty of the most popular city magazines from all over the USA (including commonwealth territories). For general travel magazines, we have Travel and Leisure, Outdoor Life, and National Geographic Traveler.

To search for a list of travel magazines, go to our catalog, switch keyword to subject, type in “travel – periodicals” and change “entire collection” to “Stephen A. Schwarzman Building.” You will get several subject headings and the first result will have over 100+ titles.

When searching for relevant titles, be sure to look at the dates and locations of the publication. You can also directly search for magazines under journal title or simply type the name of the state or city under the subject search. (Example: “Nevada – Periodicals”) If you are still finding difficulties locating a magazine from a specific town, please contact us. In addition to the periodicals collection, there are also travel maps, guides and directories available in the Map Division in Room 119.

The Library needs your support! If you can financially contribute to this growing and historical collection of traveling magazines (free and open to the public!) please donate here.

Radioactive Artist Lauren Redniss Talks of Love, Science, and Finding Inspiration at the Library

Gayle Snible, Public Relations Office — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 10:34:57 -0500

When artist and writer Lauren Redniss is asked why she created her new graphic biography Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout, her reply is as striking and powerful as her work: “I wanted to create a visual book about invisible forces,” Redniss said. “In this case, radioactivity and love. I was drawn to the Curies’ story because it is full of drama — passion, discovery, tragedy, scandal.”

In other words, this is the story of Marie and Pierre Curie as no chemistry teacher has ever presented it.

Radioactive is a visually-stimulating and serious tale depicting the discovery of radioactive power. Part love story, part graphic novel, part science textbook, the critically-acclaimed work is weaved together with such ease that readers will wish Redness could teach science at their local junior highs.

Spoilers withheld, one of the tragedies in the Curies’ lives was the freak accident that took Pierre’s life in 1906. One of the scandals is Marie Curie’s later love affair with French physicist Paul Langevin. Want more? Read it!

The cyanotype, a camera-less photographic technique that uses the sun’s UV rays and results in blue prints, figures prominently in Radioactive’s aesthetic. “I chose to make the book’s images as cyanotypes because I thought it added other layers of meaning,” explains Redniss. “Concentrated radium — one of the radioactive elements discovered by the Curies — glows a blue color.”

Redniss’s art is spectacular on gallery walls as well; the Radioactive exhibition opens today at The New York Public Library. Adding another dimension to the work, the exhibition displays Redniss’s visuals and text but also takes the viewer through the creative process behind the book.

A Fellow at the Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers in 2008–2009, Redniss was inspired by many of the Library’s collections. The Radioactive exhibition includes 50 of Redniss’s works but also many of the Library materials that influenced her work. “It was fantastic to be able to have access to the Library’s collections of artists’ books, go to the third floor and look at hand painted 19th-century travelogues, to sit in the Map Division and look at gorgeous old maps with allegorical drawings of earth, wind, air, and fire in the corners; to study illuminated manuscripts in the Rare Book Division.” Redniss also consulted Library materials to create a font for the book named Eusapia LR (after the Italian spiritual medium Eusapia Palladino).

Research for the book occurred outside of the Library as well. “I traveled to the Nevada Test Site to talk to weapons specialists. I went to Hiroshima to interview atomic bomb survivors. I spoke with an oncologist exploring innovative radiation treatment in San Bernadino, California, and the Idaho National Laboratory’s Director of the Center for Space Nuclear Research about how nuclear power and propulsion can enable space exploration — and crystal cities on the moon,” enthuses Redniss. “A biologist studying the land around the Chernobyl nuclear plant talked with me about his research on the animal populations in the 30 years since the disaster there. In Warsaw I visited the house where Marie Curie was born. I interviewed Marie and Pierre Curie’s granddaughter at the Curie Institute in Paris.”

Influenced by the Library and her travels, Redniss, a faculty member at New York City’s Parsons The New School for Design, then used her work in the classroom to inspire her students in a course about mounting the exhibition and its accompanying website. Created by Parsons students, the Radioactive website allows users to experience the exhibition through an atom animation, a game that offers a peak into the life of Marie Curie, and a “make-your-own-cyanotype” feature using images from the Library’s Digital Gallery.

This piece was originally published in The Huffington Post. View more >>

Elements of Cartography

Matt Knutzen, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Map Division — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 10:30:37 -0500

The title of this post comes from an important textbook that every formally trained student of cartography will recognize. Arthur Robinson (1915-2004), a towering figure in the world of cartography and geography, first published Elements of Cartography in 1953. Now in it sixth edition, Elements remains an essential teaching tool in both cartographic literacy and the basics of mapmaking.

In Elements, the reader is reminded that every map should have a set of common features (elements) aside from the geographic information that delineate the landscape.

And while the book is about making new maps, the elements of cartography, as they are etched, engraved, printed, hand-colored, cataloged, digitized and presented on old maps in our Digital Gallery, and in our new web map toolkit maps.nypl.org, and outlined and illustrated below, can be a source of enormous inspiration, stirring the creative juices of not only cartographers, but visual artists, designers, historians, sociologists, anthropologists and more...

Dive in further at the Library's Map Division.

Compass Rose

The compass rose tells us which way is north (not all maps orient north at top as with the image below from the Map of New England Captain John Smith's 1627 The generall historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles ...

Scalebar

The scalebar tells us what a given unit of measurement (inch, cm etc...) indicates when applied to the map (miles, km, etc...) The scalebar on the map below, Lord Baltimore's 1635 Noua Terrae-Mariae tabula, indicates its map units as "Sea Leagues".

Representative Fraction

The representative fraction, e.g. 1/62,500 tells us that one unit (any unit) of measurement equals, in this example, 62,500 of that same unit on the planet earth. The map below, titled Mount Marcy, was first published by the U.S. Geological Survey sometime in the 1880's and reprinted in 1912. This map is a quadrangle map, indicating it covers 1/4 of a degree on the planet earth.

Cartouche

The cartouche frames out a titleblock and publisher’s information and often contain really interesting expositions related to the publication of the map, complete with the appropriate genuflecting to a king or God. The cartouche below is from John Speed's America with those known parts in that unknowne worlde... published in 1627. The scrolly shape in this example gives an indication of origins of the word cartouche, which is French for cartridge, as in bullet. Before the invention of metal or plastic casings, the cartridge was made a rolled paper package fulled with gunpowder and lead shot. Apparently, the scrolls looked like cartouches, hence the name.

Neatline

The neatline frames the area of geographic coverage on the map (in this case Virginia) and is sometimes coupled with a grid that is keyed either to an index or to the graticule (lines of latitude and longitude). In the cartouche tucked up against the neatline below, naked baby angels called "puttis" hold aloft a curtain with the title Nova Virginiae Tabula on this 1671 map, originally commissioned by John Smith.

Legend

The legend unpacks the meaning of the symbols used to depict different types of information on the map such as cities, mountains, roads etc... The legend below, from J.H. Young's New Jersey, published in 1839 indicates symbology for both the latest innovations transportation, from canals to railroads, to tried and true "common" and stage roads.

Whimsy

And finally, in addition to those standard cartographic elements, we have fun things appearing here an there, as if by magic, like sea dragons, and warring ships, angelic cartographers, historic and allegorical figures. These things allude, often in modern and self conscious fashion, to the makers of the maps, or the the wider geopolitical zeitgeist, and in some cases to the cosmographical order of things in the universe.

Homann, Regni Mexicani... 1759-1784:

John Speed's America...1671:

Again, John Speed's America... 1671:

Again, Homann, Regni Mexicani... 1759-1784:

Hondius, Virginiae item et Floridae Americae... 1636:

Ortelius, Americae sive novi orbis...1573:

Hopefully, you can draw some inspiration from these Elements of Cartography!

Survey and the City: An Imaginary Conversation With E.L. Viele

Artis Wright, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Map Division — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 05:20:28 -0500

Egbert Ludovicus Viele (Vee-lee) was born June 17, 1825 in Waterford, New York. He was a member of Congress, U.S. Civil War Union Army officer and was commissioner of New York City parks from 1883 to 1884. The West Point graduate surveyed the island of Manhattan and was appointed engineer-in-chief of Central Park in 1856, and engineer of Prospect Park, Brooklyn in 1860.

Viele is best know as the surveyor responsible for the popular topographic map Sanitary and Topographical Map of the City and Island of New York (now called the "Viele Map,") first published in 1865 and he is also responsible for the Topographical Atlas of the City of New York published in 1874. Both of his works show the original streams, marshes and coastline of New York City, superimposed over the present day street grid. On Feb 3, 1859 Viele gave testimony to the New York Senate on the disastrous effects of NYC’s topography and urban design on the health of its residents.

Artis Wright: Mr. Viele thank you for joining me today in the Map Division for this imaginary interview.

E.L. Viele: Thanks for having me.

AW: Please tell our readers your opinion of the sanitary conditions of late 19th century New York City.

ELV: The sanitary condition of any city or district of country is so intimately connected with its proper drainage, and the latter is so dependent upon and governed by the topography of the locality that it would appear requisite that any enquiry into the causes or remedies for sanitary evils existing in the city of New York should be based upon a thorough knowledge of the topography of the island upon which it is built, and I have no hesitation in expressing the opinion that one of the chief causes of mortality is to be found in the defective drainage of certain districts of the city.

AW: How would you describe Manhattan’s pre-urban topography?

ELV: The topography of the island of New York varies from 5 to 150 feet above high-water mark; that between these two limits there is every variety of surface. In some sections the topography is of the most intricate description [with] abrupt ledges of rock, deep and narrow vallies [sic], sudden upheavals and contortions of the geological formations. Winding along this varied surface, in every direction, are the original drainage streams, one of them of such an extent that it was formerly used for mill purposes.

AW: What is your opinion of Manhattan’s urban street grid system with regard to the island’s topography?

ELV: In laying out the city, the sectangular [sic] system of streets and avenues has been adopted, no reference whatever being made to the original topography of the island. The consequence is that the grading of the streets, especially in the upper part of the city, consists of deep rock excavations and high embankments, some of them as high as forty feet. These embankments cross, of course, the old vallies [sic] of drainage, through which flows the drainage-stream of a large area.

AW: Haven’t the city and private developers addressed these issues by constructing culverts when needed?

ELV: In most instances a few stones are thrown together and called a culvert for the purpose of letting these streams pass under the embankments. A few months suffice to destroy these culverts for the purpose of conductors, and the embankments soon become permanent dams, causing the collection of large bodies of water all over the island, which in mid-summer become stagnant pools, breeding pestilence and disease.

AW: “Pestilence and disease?” Please explain.

ELV: Whenever it becomes desirable to improve the lots adjacent to these embankments for sale or building purposes, earth is dumped in to absorb the water which is none the less present because it is not seen. The soil becoming saturated, forms a sort of sponge, through which the water ascends by capillary attraction, giving out a constant miasma, no less fatal to health than the stagnant water which it replaced.

AW: The city’s sewer system would address this, would it not?

ELV: Any system of sewerage, no matter how perfect, would not be a remedy for this evil, for the sewers are but ten or twelve feet below the grade of the streets, whilst, as has been stated, in some instances these streams are forty feet below grade of the streets, being thirty feet between the bottom of the sewer and the water drainage.

AW: Ok, point noted. Which part of Manhattan is most susceptible to these waterborne diseases?

ELV: What has been said applies more particularly to the upper part of the island, and whatever buildings have been erected in the valleys filled up as I have described, the tenants of these buildings will testify to the truth of what has been asserted. But the trouble has not been confined to the upper portion of the city. The existence of the old Collect pond in the 6th ward [know today as the Civic Center and Chinatown] is remembered by all familiar with New York… This large body of water… was seventy feet in depth. It occupied the site of the present “Halls of Justice,” or “Tombs” as it is called, and was connected with the Hudson river [sic] by a stream running through what is now Centre and Canal streets. No trace now exists of the pond or the stream, yet the wretched victims who have from time to time been sacrificed to the deadly miasma in the lower cells of the city prison are evidence that the water is still there, although it is concealed from view by the earth which is mixed in with it. Further evidence is found in the fact that in this section of the city, it is impossible to have dry cellars.

AW: How can the city remedy this situation?

ELV: The remedy to be applied in the lower part of the city is to widen the narrow streets, and to raise the grade where the streets pass through the original depression of the surface.

AW: What’s wrong with narrow streets? Many people find them to be quaint and charming.

ELV: Narrow streets, under any circumstances, are a curse to a city. They are too generally the abodes of vice and crime. In them an ordinary sickness spreads into a pestilence, and a fire into a conflagration. They are always filthy in summer, and frequently blocked up with snow in winter. They are not fit for business purposes, for they stifle commerce, nor for residences, for they breed disease. Wide streets, on the contrary, are more healthy and cheerful for residences, and more useful and valuable for business purposes. There is less danger from fire, as the flames cannot spread across the street. They are cleaner in summer, and are never impassable in winter. [And] by constructing lateral drains along the slope of the depressions in the lower part of the city, and connecting them with the sewers, they will intercept the water in its descent and prevent its accumulation in the original basins.

AW: And Upper Manhattan?

ELV: As regards the upper part of the city, it is absolutely necessary that some system should be adopted for the free flow of water along the channels of the original drainage stream. This can be done by building more substantial culverts beneath the streets, and by the construction of permanent drains so, built as to admit of the percolation of water through the interstices of the covering. These drains should be excavated to a firm substratum, and every property owner should be compelled to construct, of a uniform character, that portion of each drain which may pass through his property.

AW: Thanks for communicating with our readers from the grave. If they have questions how can they contact you?

ELV: It has been my pleasure. I’ll be spending the rest of eternity with my second wife in our pyramid shaped mausoleum in West Point, New York. NYPL readers can reach me there.

Handmade Crafternoon: Make Your Own Map Day

Jessica Pigza, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Rare Book Division — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 07:10:14 -0400

On Saturday, October 23rd, please join us for an afternoon of free DIY cartography at the Library. Special guests Matt Knutzen (the Library's own geospatial librarian) and map artist Connie Brown of Redstone Studios will teach us a bit about cartography, and then we'll all put that knowledge to use in making our own personal maps. We'll have basic supplies for this hands-on project to share, but if you have your own compass and ruler you are welcome to bring them along to use. Matt has promised to bring out a swell spread of maps and atlases from the Library’s collections to inspire as well.

Not so sure that workaday wayfinding tools can be artsy crafty? Think again. Design*Sponge featured a few beautiful embroidered maps late last year. Recent books like You Are Here and The Map as Art gather together examples of artists' incorporation of cartography in a variety of media. Online projects like Kris Harzinski's Hand Drawn Map Association (and his book From Here to There) highlight the creative mapmaking potential inherent in each of us. And exhibitions such as You Are Here: Mapping the Psychogeography of New York City provide innovative and interactive map experiences for those who step into the gallery space.

I hope that you'll find your way to the Library on the 23rd! You'll find all of the event details here.

Designing the City of New York: The Commissioners’ Plan of 1811

Artis Wright, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Map Division — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 06:56:43 -0400

New York City’s wealth of good design is well known. Its streets are home to a plethora of artisans, graphic designers, fashion designers, architects, etc. who spend their days focused on creating objects, spaces, or experiences that are new, innovative and unique. These designers are often given a blank canvas of raw material—“what is”—onto which they must describe a vision—“what can be.”

Now imagine an urban designer given the monumental task of designing a plan for the orderly growth of a young metropolis. Home to one of the most diverse and industrious populations every assembled, with thousands of newcomers arriving each year. To complicate matters even further, image that the “blank canvas” onto which s/he must channel the city’s explosive growth is a hilly wooded island 13.4 miles long, ranging from 0.8 to 2.3 miles wide populated with dozens of independent farms, villages, and homesteads lacking any cohesion or unity.

In a nutshell, that was the task New York City’s Common Council (the City Council of its time) gave to statesman Gouverneur Morris, surveyor John Rutherfurd, and New York State Surveyor General Simeon De Witt in the spring of 1807. These three men were appointed “Commissioners of Streets and Roads” and would spend the next 4 years developing a plan that would meet the Common Council’s stated goal of “laying out Streets... in such a manner as to unite regularity and order with the public convenience and benefit and in particular to promote the health of the City..."

A visual depiction of the Commissioners’ plan can be seen in William Bridges’ This map of the city of New York and island of Manhattan... (1811.) Bridges’ map and the Commissioners’ remarks describing the proposed plan is an example of great design in which a simple concept—the grid—would influence and inform all of the principles of the plan’s design. Furthermore, the decision to ascribe numerical names to the streets and avenues that made up the plan’s grid bequeathed New York City an urban design simplicity that makes navigating through its tower lined canyons—by foot, bicycle, automobile or subway—remarkably easy.

However, like most designs the Commissioners' plan was not executed precisely as created. A fact that can be appreciated each time you visit Central Park or venture along Broadway. To see which aspects made the cut and which were thankfully ignored visit my Designing the City of New York: The Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 map blog in which I overlay some of the plan’s proposed plazas and avenues onto a contemporary map of NYC. You can also use the map blog to tour 19th century Manhattan and see the location of places of worship, municipal buildings, schools, etc. that are depicted in the index of Bridges’ maps.

View Designing the City of New York: The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 in a larger map

You are here: 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue in 1857

Artis Wright, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Map Division — Wed, 19 May 2010 11:34:46 -0400

I am at the corner of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. According to plate 78 of my map atlas—Williams Perris’s 1857 “Maps of the City of New York”—the massive (2) block long stone structure at the southwest corner of this Manhattan intersection is not the grand Beaux Arts NYPL Schwarzman Building but the Distributing Reservoir of the Croton Aqueduct Department. The large stone Egyptian Revival structure is approximately 50 feet tall and was designed to contain 20 million gallons of water that has been channeled through dozens of tunnels, pipes and stone canals from the Croton River in Westchester County over 40 miles to the north. Completed in 1842, the aqueduct helped New York City (which at that time just included the island of Manhattan) provide clean drinking water to over half a million people. As I look at Perris’ 1857 map atlas, it is hard to recognize the city I thought I knew so well. Not only is the library not there (and won't be completed until 1911, 54 years later) a few other familiar landmarks are also missing. Adjacent to the Distributing Reservoir and taking up the remainder of the block going toward Sixth Ave. is “Reservoir Square,” which I have learned was the original name of the midtown green oasis beloved by thousands of office workers and tourist alike— Bryant Park. I return to the map atlas and look eastward, across Fifth Ave. at 42nd St and I see the building footprint of a structure that is labeled Rutgers Institute. The Rutgers Institute is believed to be New York’s first institute of higher learning dedicated to the education of women. The building depicted on the map atlas is actually the college’s second of three locations. The institute first opened on Madison Street in the Lower East Side and would move to West 55th St in 1883 before being absorbed by Rutgers University in New Jersey. Not only has the institute moved on, so have most of the institutions, businesses, and land uses depicted in Perris’ map atlas. I was surprised to see “cattle yards” and “cattle sheds” described as the uses on most of the blocks between 44th and 46th St. east of Fifth Ave. I also noticed that within a 10 block radius of the corner of 42nd and Fifth Ave. there were at least 8 different horse stables, including the Third Avenue Stage Line stables on 44th St. near Fifth Ave, the Manhattan Avenue Stage Line stables on Fourth Ave. between 41st and 40th St., and the Fifth Avenue Stage Line stables. I was even more amazed to discover that the Fifth Avenue Stage Line stables on 43rd St. shares the block with a slaughter house, the Sixth Ave Railroad Depot and the Colored Orphan Asylum. Talk about “mixed-use”! You can take your own walk along the streets of 1857 Manhattan by exploring Perris’ "Maps of the City of New York" online at NYPL’s Digital Gallery or visit the Map Division in room 117 of the Schwarzman Building at 42nd Street and 5th Avenue to see the map atlases in their original form.

Mapping the World: A Review

Katerina Dimitriadou-Shuster, Special Formats Processing — Thu, 06 May 2010 13:20:29 -0400

One of the books recently received at the Map Division is Mapping the world: Stories of Geography by Caroline & Martine Laffon. Even in a pile of other impressive acquisitions, the book is hard to miss. A perfect example of “judging a book by its cover,” the entire work is aesthetically pleasing, with stunning images of maps created in places and cultures around the world.

Mapping the world is a history of cartography with a philosophical twist. It does not aim for a linear description of the development of cartography, but the authors look at maps and their creators within the broader context of the history of thought. Consequently, maps are perceived as possible answers to fundamental questions of humanity, such as beliefs about creation and cosmology, the depiction of imaginary or holy places, or more pragmatic matters such as travel and trade routes, battle plans, and the promises of the New World.

Along with the more familiar images of world maps and nautical charts, one can find a Native American map depicting tribes living in South Carolina; details of landscapes in Canada and the Himalayas; a tapestry representing the city of Srinigar in the Kashmir Valley; and a Mexican map of rivers. The text runs almost parallel to the images, often matching them visually but not necessarily describing the maps. The authors do not claim to give definitive solutions to the issues they address. Instead, they seem content to ask some important questions, and let the maps provide their own answers to the reader.

Travel in Andalusia, Spain

Katerina Dimitriadou-Shuster, Special Formats Processing — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 07:18:35 -0400

The secret to a successful trip abroad may simply be to know yourself, what you are looking for, and where to find it. For the traveler looking for art and history, untouched mountain trails and sandy beaches, along with distinctive culinary and musical traditions, Andalusia in Spain may be the ideal choice.

Located at the southernmost part of the Iberian Peninsula, Andalusia’s major cities include Cordoba, Granada, Malaga, Ronda, and its capital, Seville. These urban centers boast a great number of museums and galleries, historical monuments such as palaces, castles and churches or mosques, and countless restaurants and tapas bars. Traveling by public transportation or your own car, you will cross through beautiful inland routes that lead to rough and untouched mountain villages, or busy tourist resorts along the coasts.

If you are looking for historical monuments, you will be glad to know that Andalusia has settlements dating back to the Roman times, and has seen the presence of Vandals, Visigoths and Byzantines in its midst. During much of the Middle Ages, Andalusia was under Muslim rule, and the castles and palaces they left behind bear the distinct marks of this history. Examples of monuments built during the Christian rule from the 16th century onwards include Gothic and Renaissance Cathedrals, and numerous smaller churches and monasteries. Practically every city also retains part of its old medieval quarters, with narrow winding cobbled streets, whitewashed houses with spectacular courtyards, and an overall sense of taking a step back in time.

In the cities, the list of must-see sites is hard to keep short. The most impressive monuments in Cordoba are the Mezquita (Grand Mosque), and the Alcazar de los Reyes Christianos, a fortress that was used as one of the primary residences of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon. In Granada, home to Andalusia’s most impressive medieval Islamic monuments, you can’t miss the Alhambra, a series of palaces and gardens built in the 14th century, and the Albaicin, the best preserved old town quarters. Seville is bursting with history, but if pressed with time, it is worth visiting the old city, where you can find one of the largest Cathedrals in Europe and La Giralda, a tall minaret with spectacular view of the city. Art and history buffs will also delight in the Archive of the Indies, a beautiful building of the Casa Lonja de Mercaderes housing the archives illustrating the history of the Spanish Empire in the Americas and the Philippines.The Fine Arts Museum of Seville contains the second largest picture collection in Spain.

Andalucia’s coastline is over 500 miles long, most of which is sandy beach. There are beaches for all tastes, from popular resorts bouncing to the music of beach bars, to quiet inaccessible coves. It is worth checking out the Costa de Almeria, the Costa Tropical and the trendy Costa del Sol. For a dip into the Atlantic, the Costa de la Luz lies along the shore to the west of Gibraltar. Many of these beaches meat the criteria of the Blue Flag Programme for environmental management. If you are not a fan of the beach, the Sierra Nevada mountain range offers spectacular mountain views, trekking opportunities through untouched villages and national parks, and even skiing at Europe’s southernmost ski station.

For a taste of local life, Andalusia is world famous for its flamenco music, singing and dance; bullfighting; and an endless variety of tapas. Chances are, you can enjoy all of the above during one of the many festivals, fiestas or local annual fairs held throughout the year. Blessed with one of Europe’s highest sunshine rates, it is always a good time to visit, although the best months are from May to June, and from September to October, when one can avoid the intense heat of summer. For the budget traveler, from November to April hotel prices (and tourist crowds) tend to be reduced, but the weather can be unpredictable.

For those whose travel plans take them elsewhere but still have a craving for Andalusia, why not curl up at home, listen to some flamenco music by one of Spain's most beloved composers and guitarists, Paco de Lucia, and read all about Andalusia in the 1920s and 1930s in Gerald Brenan's book South from Granada: a delightful trip down memory lane of life in Yegen, a small village in Andalusia's Alpujarras district, with the added bonus of visits from Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey.

Did you know…?

Andalusia takes its name from Al-Andalus, the name originally given to all parts of the Iberian Peninsula that were at various times governed by Muslims over the period 711-1492.
During the 10th century C.E. the city of Córdoba was one of the largest and most prosperous urban centers of medieval Europe, enjoying street lighting, an extensive irrigation system, and great universities and libraries that contributed to a flourishing cultural and intellectual life.
On February 28 Andalusia celebrates Día de Andalucía ("Day of Andalusia"), which commemorates the 1980 referendum that led to declaring Andalusia an autonomous community of Spain.
South from Granada was filmed by Fernando Colomo in 2006.

Sources

Andalucia.com

Lonely planet Andalucía (2006)

Drawing on the Past: Enlivening the Study of Historical Geography at maps.nypl.org

Matt Knutzen, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Map Division — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 11:50:12 -0500

On behalf of The Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, the NYPL’s Director of Digital Strategy and Scholarship and our partners EntropyFree LLC, I am proud to announce the launch of maps.nypl.org

This new website is a parallel snapshot of all maps currently available on the Digital Gallery as well as a powerful set of tools designed to significantly enhance the way we access and use maps and the cartographic information they contain.

The first such enhancement is in how historic maps are viewed. The user interface of maps.nypl.org allows zooming and panning in a way that has come to be expected by users of web maps (Google Maps, Bing Maps etc...)

The next is georectification, which we are calling here “warping”, a familiar term to GIS professionals and few others. Map “warping” is the process where digital images of maps are stretched, placing the maps themselves into their geographic context, rendered either on the website or with tools such as Google Earth.

Illustrated here is the 1915 Redraft of the 1660 Castello Plan documenting early lower Manhattan, “warped” using the Map Warper and rendered in Google Earth.

And below here, a set of 98 detailed sheet maps of the New York City published by William Perris in the early 1850s, overlaid in Google Earth after having been “warped” and mosaicked using maps.nypl.org

Once historical map has been digitally “warped,” users of the Library’s digital maps can virtually “trace” features, such as cities, farm boundaries, rivers, ponds and even buildings, converting them into digital geospatial data. And that data, in turn can be easily linked to other digital information, such as building photographs, text citations or any other information that relates to the same geographic location.

Illustrated below is a photo of Phenix Bank at 45 Wall Street, digitally “pinned” to one of the maps in the series shown above.

One of the most exciting aspects of this project is its participatory nature, meaning that anybody with a computer can create an account, log in, and begin warping and tracing maps, whether for a school or personal project or otherwise. And when the project is complete, the contribution remains in place (à la Wikipedia and openstreetmap.org ), adding one more piece to this new historical geographic data model.

I’ll blog again about some of the ways maps.nypl.org is already being employed by a variety of user groups. Also, follow us on twitter for project updates and events.

For now, however, feel free to create an account, watch the how to video, and enjoy.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Matt Knutzen, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Map Division — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 07:22:15 -0500

Happy Thanksgiving from The Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division! Come see Willem Janszoon Blaeu's Nova Belgica et Anglia Nova in person at the fabulous Mapping New York's Shoreline 1609-2009 exhibition, open today and the Friday and Saturday following Thanksgiving in the Gottesman Exhibition Hall located on the first floor of the Stephan A. Schwarzman Building.

Blaeu, Willem
Nova Belgica et Anglia Nova
[1635?]

Dutch cartographers of the 17th century were eager to portray not only the mountains, lakes, rivers, coasts, cities and fortifications in the New Netherlands colony, but also the diverse biogeography of the new world, as you can see in this map, reassuring the colonial sponsors that theirs was a land of plenty, with enough beaver, bear, fox, rabbit and deer pelts to go around, and that there was no shortage of turkey to eat!

Catalog Record

Digital Gallery Image

Charting the Future I

Matt Knutzen, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Map Division — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:22:54 -0500

Over the years, as we push more and more of our maps onto the web, such as Pieter Goos' Zee-Atlas, 1672, from which the below image was taken, we ask… ...what do we do with all this stuff? ...how do we make digital maps meaningful?

One approach is through our blog, where we highlight various places and themes depicted. Often there is much more to read between the contours, about, among other things the social, geographic and cultural mix from where the maps were generated; something we, in future posts, will take the time to illuminate.

Another approach to extend the reach, utility and meaningfulness of our maps is through digital geographic indexing. Our staff has thus far created map indexes for close to 1/3 of our 10,000 digitized maps, which you can read about here and download here, in effect opening an opportunity for readers to access our collections geographically.

And while schematic and geographic indexes serve a much needed function, they merely point to the next logical steps in the presentation and re-purposing of map images in a web context.

The first step is placing the maps themselves (as opposed to outlines of the map coverages) into geographic context, or put another way, turning pictures of maps into digital geospatial information, where a pixel can be read by a computer as a pair of coordinates, as latitude and longitude.

These images can then, in turn, be rendered using tools such as web map servers and the ubiquitous Google Earth. The image below is Plate 1 from William Perris' Maps of the City of New York, 1852, georectified and then rendered in Google Earth.

Stay tuned. In my next post I'll go the details about how we "stretch" maps for web presentation. We will also explain how you too can participate.

Mapping New York's Shoreline: The Storied River

Matt Knutzen, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Map Division — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 08:42:37 -0400

Staff of the New York Public Library recently hand picked a set of nearly 500 images, collected from across our Digital Gallery, composing them as a curated set of images at the Commons on Flickr. They represent the Hudson River Valley through several hundred years of history and complement Mapping New York's Shoreline, 1609-2009, now up in the Gottesman Exhibition Hall at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building.

The images depict landscape scenes in stereoscopic vision, a popular 19th century format; everyday and commemorative menus from restaurants and catering halls; postcards of scenic places and buildings; and engravings of important estates, prominent citizens and dramatic turning points in historical events. These images have been geocoded and are part of map-based bibliography, The Storied River, coming soon to the NYPL. Stay tuned, the launch will be posted on the NYPL's map blog...

In the meantime, enjoy the same photos at the Commons on Flickr, perused as a gallery of images... Mapping New York's Shoreline: The Storied River ...or, my favorite, pinned to a map on the Flickr website.

Learn more about the NYPL Map Division.

Hudson's Legacy

Paula Baxter — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 05:15:54 -0400

No, I'm not referring to Henry Hudson and his quadricentennial of "discovering" Manhattan and the river that's named after him. I'm speaking of Alice Hudson, Chief of the Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, who retires this week after a long and glorious career at NYPL. She's someone who impacted many lives, leaving behind a shining legacy that will continue to glow for years.

I'll particularly miss Alice's wry humor. I still chuckle when I recall her telling me that she first wanted to title her upcoming exhibition (Mapping New York's Shoreline 1609-2009) "Hudson on Hudson." You could always count on her to tell it like it is. Her professional dedication was always so obvious and so inspiring. A former student told me once that,when talking about a favorite topic related to maps or map librarianship, she'd light up with a very physical incandescence. She's taught a generation of new and aspiring map librarians, counceled collectors, helped grateful general readers, and always looked after the Mercator Society. In addition to her many contributions to NYPL, I seem to recollect that she won a very prestigious librarian award some years ago...

Alice's teaching is only one facet of her many abilities. Her leadership proved invaluable in important endeavors, as when she welcomed the world of K-12 teachers and students to the Map Division, and incorporated their interests into her show and tells and exhibition work, demonstrating how there could be a place for these constituents in a research library. There are many reasons why the NYPL Map Division is one of the top ten in the world, and Alice has everything to do with them. Another facet of her professionalism is her fierce devotion to public service. Having reached a point where she could forgivably build an ivory tower to lock herself in with major projects, she never lost the understanding that helping people directly is most important of all.

Well, I'd better wind down now or Alice will get a swelled head. And the halo will fall off! C'mpn folks, let's get serious and use this post as the social networking tool it is. I think Alice is fabulous, her legacy is intact, and she'll be missed like crazy. Other comments?