Mapping Indiana’s History Using GIS Technology Bill Holder, Koscuisko County Kevin Mickey, The Polis Center

GIS and History

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships GIS and History Historical GIS is a computer-based tool and an associated set of methods that combines geography (study of spatial differentiation) and history (study of temporal differentiation) In other words… the study of change over space and time.

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Challenges of Historical GIS Thinking spatially  Where is something (an object) located?  What characteristics (attributes) are part of the object in its location?  Has it moved, and has its movement changed its characteristics? Thinking visually  Representing complexity  Representing movement through space and time

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Challenges of Historical GIS Historical data are often uncertain, ambiguous, incomplete, or missing Contextual data are limited Complex software Incomplete spatial ontology (classification schemes)

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Questions to Consider What can be learned from what is shown on a map?  Symbols used to represent information  Major events/features as perceived by the designer What can be learned by what is missing on a map?  Missing borders  Features such as cities or other cultural features

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Example Rambles thru our Country

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Working with non-georeferenced data

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Issues for Scanned Imagery Creating digital map images requires access to a scanner.  Can be quite expensive – although inexpensive options are available. Decisions must be made about resolution.  Higher resolution images show more detail, but create larger files that are slow to display.

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Issues for Scanned Imagery Delivering digital map images  Large image files are typically very slow to deliver across the Web.

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Deriving Vector Data from Raster Maps Heads-up ‘tracing’ (digitizing)  Involves manually drawing points, lines, and polygons on top of a raster image that has been scanned into a digital format.

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Deriving Vector Data from Raster Maps Automatic vectorization tools  Also involves creating points lines and polygons, but in this case, the computer automatically scans the map and creates the features.  The quality of the output depends on the quality of the data source. Some manual editing is nearly always necessary.

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Capturing and Using Attributes You can create a database attached to the vectorized graphic feature which can then be queried as needed.  For example - “Find the geographic feature named Anticoste I.”

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Applications of Historical GIS Project Examples

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Projects Project on Religion and Urban Culture Teaching American History Grants Historic Cemeteries in Indiana

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Project on Religion and Urban Culture The Project on Religion and Urban Culture nurtured public inquiry and civic conversation about the role of religion in the creation and re-creation of urban community in one American city, and, by implication, in other American cities. Products included eight books, two video series and over 90 periodical publications.

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Steps in Thinking Textual data suggested the relocation of churches is related to movement of members.  We mapped church members addresses at multiple points in history to visualize the patterns of their movement and their relationship to class. Example – 2 nd Presbyterian Church

1909

1928

1959

1998

1947 Membership overlaid on portion of Median Income Mapping the member locations provided the ability to explore the relationship between demographics and member locations.

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Teaching American History Grants Polis and its partners were recipients of three multi-million dollar Teaching American History grants from the U.S. Department of Education between 2007 and Grant partners  IUPUI Department of History  Virginia Center for Digital History  Charlottesville Public Schools  City of Martinsville and Brown County, Indiana school systems

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Teaching American History Grants Project activities included development and testing of multiple approaches for integrating geospatial technologies into the social studies curriculum of K-12 classrooms. These efforts ranged from conducting stand alone workshops to integrating workshops with field research over a multi-month period. Teachers learned a variety of GIS tools and developed lesson plans.

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Examples of projects ‘Why are we here?’ Identify patterns of the impact of industrialization on urbanization ‘My Changing Indiana’ Describe the removal of Indian groups from Indiana in the 1830s ‘Bloomington Indiana: How has it changed?’ ‘Indiana Pre-statehood Using Maps’ Earthquake patterns

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Mapping Historic Cemeteries Using GIS Technology

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Where my Interest in Cemeteries began Picture it – Knoxville Tennessee, Summer of 1994 Worked as a GIS Specialist for the Knoxville/Knox County Tennessee Metropolitan Planning Commission Volunteered at the Great Smoky Mountain National Park one day a week Assigned to work with a seasonal park ranger on surveying the Cemeteries of Cades Cove Used traditional survey equipment to map the cemeteries. Also transcribed the information from each stone Enjoyed the experience of working in these historic Cemeteries in a beautiful mountain setting

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Why map Cemeteries? Genealogy Preservation

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Giving Credit 2007 Indiana GIS Conference Margaret Minzner – Mapping Historic Structures Gunty Atkins/Shaun Scholer – Marrying Historic Info into GIS Val Swift - Who’s on (The Property) First? All three presentations involved mapping history or using historic resources in GIS. (Fascinating!!!) Discussion with Rick Kiersey – City of Kendallville City was using GIS to map and manage their Cemetery

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Kosciusko Project Beginnings Kosciusko County Historical Society Warsaw High School Coop Student Kokomo/Howard County Library

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships The First Field Trip Cook Cemetery – Near Warsaw Supplies – Trimble Geo XT, Camera, Cemetery Map provided by Township Trustee and GIS Map with 2005 Orthophoto Conclusions – GPS not necessary if gravestones are visible on orthos

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships The Field Work Process Cemetery Field Work Supplies – Camera (model), GIS Map with 2005 Orthophoto, 1970’s transcription done by Lester Binnie, Cemetery Log Sheet

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Software Kosciusko County Historical Society Not a Kosciusko County Government Project Historical Society needed software ESRI Conservation Program Grant – Awarded May Received ArcView 9.3

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships GIS Data Input ESRI ArcGIS 9.3 Orthophoto, 1970’s transcription done by Lester Binnie, Cemetery Log Sheet Value of.5 Foot Pixel Orthophotography

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships GIS Data Input, continued ArcGIS Demo

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Funding the Project Funding Sources Kosciusko Community Foundation Esther Pfleiderer Charitable Trust Kosciusko County Historical Society City of Warsaw

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Accomplishments in 2009 Accomplishments 40 Cemeteries - Completed Photo Field Survey 35 Cemeteries – Complete and online Photographs taken 7000 GIS database records added Cemetery Data on Kosciusko County GIS Website 9 volunteers gave 100’s of hours of their time to further the project

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Cemetery Data Online -Put data on Kosciusko County GIS Website in Nov Web Demo

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships A few Indiana Historic GIS Resources

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps Fire insurance maps document the changing face of towns and cities, providing highly detailed information for each neighborhood and block The Library of Congress web site refers to them as "probably the single most important record of urban growth and development in the United States during the past one hundred years."

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships David Rumsey Map Collection

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships David Rumsey Collection Over 21,000 maps online – over 150,000 in the collection The collection focuses on rare 18th and 19th century maps of North and South America. Items range in date from about 1700 to 1950s. Downloadable in multiple resolutions Images can be reproduced or transmitted, but not for commercial use

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Newberry Library Historic maps by decade of U.S. county boundaries Available free of charge for non-commercial use

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Stanford University GIS Library Links to hundreds of websites that provide GIS data – historic and otherwise Examples  National Atlas  National Historic Geographic Information System  Hints: Be sure to explore the ‘GIS Bookmarks’ link

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships IndianaMap Current resources  Historical environmental data (earthquakes)  Population change Definite opportunities to add more data!

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Indiana Spatial Data Portal aerial photos for Bloomington 1865 plat maps for Bloomington Statewide aerial photography beginning in 1998

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships County Resources County aerial photography Historic census data Create your own (more on that later)

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships County Resources How many of you already collect historical data and what do you collect?

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Cautions You get what you pay for – free is not always good Free data may not be compatible with all GIS applications This is a limited, but growing, amount of historical data available

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships The Future of Historical GIS

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships The Potential of Web 2.0 Ubiquitous Speedy Relatively non-technical Connective Collaborative Open platforms

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Web 2.0 Platforms Wikis Mash-Ups Blogs Social networking sites Volunteered video Virtual Reality Environments (VREs) Mobile devices

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Participatory Learning “Participatory Learning includes the ways in which new technologies enable learners (of any age) to contribute in diverse ways to individual and shared learning goals. Through games, wikis, blogs, virtual environments, social network sites, cell phones, mobile devices, and other digital platforms, learners can participate in virtual communities where they share ideas, comment upon one another's projects, and plan, design, advance, implement, or simply discuss their goals and ideas together. “ McArthur Foundation, 2008

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Redefining GIS Moving beyond traditional GIS Making GIS truly multimodal Opening GIS to VREs and immersive environments Creating collaborative spaces (Participatory GIS) Developing a new way of learning (nonlinear, fluid, reflexive)

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Virtual Globes

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Wikimapia

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Flickr

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships VGI Mash-up

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Immersive Visualization

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Spatial Gaming

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships Spatial VR

Coordination of Indiana GIS through dissemination of data and data products, education and outreach, adoption of standards, and building partnerships The Way Forward Making all forms of space—geographic, conceptual, relative—explicit in our work. Teaching spatial literacy. Developing a humanities-friendly spatial toolkit, building from exemplar historical GIS projects. Proving the case.

Questions