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Posted by: Meagan Snow
How have national and global populations been mapped over time? This blog post uses collection items from the Geography & Map Division at the Library of Congress to explore changing methods for mapping populations, from census-based thematic maps to modern population raster datasets.
Posted in: Big Data and Visualization, Geographic Information Science
Posted by: Meagan Snow
In the early 20th century, most of America’s rural roads were constructed of gravel or dirt, causing slow travel and muddy roads. As new modes of transportation blossomed in cities – cars, bicycles, trolleys, and paved streets – a political movement called the Good Roads Movement aimed to connect rural areas with local cities via …
Posted in: 20th century cartography, American History
Posted by: Meagan Snow
Andersonville Prison, arguably the most horrific Confederate prison for Union soldiers, was constructed in 1864 during the US Civil War and was located a little over a hundred miles south of Atlanta, Georgia. The prison was constructed as an open-air stockade with walls made of pine logs at least fifteen feet high. During its fourteen …
Posted in: 19th century cartography, American History
Posted by: Meagan Snow
Flow maps are characterized by representing direction and amount of movement between an origin and a destination – and Charles Joseph Minard is widely regarded as the first cartographer who mastered the art of the flow map. He is best known for his flow map of Napolean’s 1812 invasion of Russia titled “Carte figurative des …
Posted in: 19th century cartography, American History
Posted by: Meagan Snow
Have you ever wondered how historic maps can be used with today’s modern mapping technologies? One of the ways in which analog maps can be used with GIS (Geographic Information Systems) is through a process called georeferencing. Georeferencing is the process of adding digital spatial reference information to an otherwise non-spatial image. Adding spatial reference …
Posted in: Big Data and Visualization, Geographic Information Science
Posted by: Meagan Snow
This post explores the history of a large spherical globe with only latitude and longitude lines in the collections of the Geography & Map Division.
Posted in: 20th century cartography, American History
Posted by: Meagan Snow
This post spotlights born-digital, georeferenced map series from the MapServer Ethiopia project, which provides modern mapping of Ethiopia at five different scales, across multiple themes.
Posted in: 21st century cartography, African History, Geographic Information Science
Posted by: Meagan Snow
This blog post describes William "Buffalo Bill" Cody's attempt to irrigate Wyoming's Big Horn Basin through maps which detail the area.
Posted in: 19th century cartography, 20th century cartography, American History
Posted by: Meagan Snow
This post details the broad history of coal and iron-ore deposit in Alabama, including the founding and building of Birmingham and the use of convict labor in the mines.
Posted in: African American History, American History, City Histories