Census Dotmap

When visiting cnn.com yesterday, I was excited to find this article about a dot map that Brandon Martin-Anderson of MIT made using Python scripts and US and Canadian census data. Unlike most dot density maps, where a single dot represents many people (the New York Times has an excellent map showing the distribution of racial and ethnic groups), this census dot map gives every person in the United States and Canada their own dot. The result is a beautiful visualization that tells us a lot about North America.

In spite of technological advances, we can see that settlements in North America are still largely determined by natural land forms. Zooming in to the Alleghenies in Pennsylvania, we can see the contours of the ridges and valleys. Rivers and lakes are also well defined: in almost every case, each bank of a major river is densely settled. It is also interesting that as we travel west, the settlements increasingly trace major highway routes.

Finally, this map shows the variety of experiences lived by Americans and Canadians. As you zoom into major cities, you see how densely populated blocks are defined and separated by major roads and physical features. We also see how densely populated the Eastern Seaboard has become, and how sparsely populated the Nevada desert and Canadian arctic remain.

You can visit the map at http://bmander.com/dotmap/index.html and change the zoom level. If you zoom in far enough, maybe you can find your own dot!

Another Map on the Wall

Once a month, I arrive home from an exhausting day of classes, meetings, and work here at the Clark Library to find a bright yellow present waiting in my mail box. That's right, it's National Geographic Day. I carry the new issue up to my apartment, tear off the pesky plastic covering, and flip through the glossy pages instead of doing that homework that I really should be doing. If it's an especially good National Geographic Day, a map will plop out of the bottom of the magazine.

I have had a subscription to National Geographic since middle school. Starting in middle school and continuing into high school, I also covered every square inch of my bedroom walls with posters. Along with the movie posters and my vintage map of Middle Earth, I hung up my favorite National Geographic supplement maps.

The first one to go up was this map of Mars which we have a copy of there are the Clark. In fact, many of the National Geographic  maps in my personal collection can also be found here.

One of the disadvantages of hanging these maps on the wall was that it meant I couldn't enjoy the backs of the maps. In most cases, I had forgotten what the backs of most of these maps looked like until I looked them up again here at the Clark. I eventually stopped hanging up my National Geographic posters because it was more fun if I could see and study both sides. In addition to being beautiful maps, these supplements have beautiful illustrations and fascinating infographics. While we would be happy to pull some of the maps in our collection for your perusal, I recommend starting your own collection. In my experience, these maps are best enjoyed when spread out on a bedroom floor.

New Resource, Old Maps

The Clark Library holds more than 370,000 maps in our collection, along with about 10,000 atlases and reference works. Despite this amazing number, patrons sometimes ask for maps that are not part of our collection, or they may not be able to visit the Clark in person. In these cases, outside digital resources may fill the gap. One of the most helpful, comprehensive sources of this kind is Old Maps Online.

The Old Maps Online portal brings together historical maps from library collections around the world, including the Harvard Map Collection; the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales; and the New York Public Library Map Division. The project was created through a collaboration between The Great Britain Historical GIS Project and Klokan Technologies GmbH of Switzerland with funding from the UK’s Joint Information Service Committee. Because the portal is free to use and does not require registration, it’s easy to begin searching the vast collections right away.

The search for maps is aided by an interface that allows users the option not only to type in the content they’re looking for, but also the ability to search by zooming in on a present-day Google map to find items in the collections linked to that geographic location.

Searching Old Maps Online

The historical maps that are part of the collection span the centuries, and include everything from boundary and political maps to estate maps and admiralty sea charts. Metadata for each digitized map identifies the collection that it is a part of, as well as information about the location, creator, date of publication, and other notes.

Because it pools the resources of many of the world’s premiere map collections, a visit to the Old Maps Online portal is like taking a trip to many libraries at once, all with a few clicks of a mouse. It may be the place to turn for that hard-to-find map you’re searching for.

The Way We Voted

The last few days of the 2012 campaign season are upon us. Although we don’t yet know what outcomes Election Day 2012 (Nov. 6) will bring, we are familiar with the process that will take place. Americans across the country will report to polling places or mail in ballots, and officials will work furiously to tally the results.

Although that voting data will be extremely important on Tuesday, it won’t disappear once the winners are determined. In fact, election night will just be the first stage in scrutiny that will continue in the months and years ahead. A staggering amount of statistical analysis and visualization can be conducted with national election data. For a comprehensive example of what’s been done since the 2008 election, check out this project, created by Stanford University’s Spatial Social Science Lab in conjunction with researchers at Harvard University.

Still from the Stanford Election Atlas

Curious about how your neighborhood voted in 2008? The Stanford Election Atlas displays results at the precinct level, allowing you to see the political variety that can often be found across just one county. The atlas also uses 2010 Census information to break down the race/ethnicity, income, potential voters per square mile, and margin of victory statistics for block groups across the country and overlay that data on the precinct returns.  

Some (not too surprising) findings from our area:  

• All of the precincts in both Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti went blue in 2008.  
• The areas in Ann Arbor with the highest percentage of potential voters (in other words, the greatest concentration of households with residents ages 18 and above) are found on or adjacent to the U of Michigan campus. 

 
Only time will tell what the Election Atlas will look like for the 2012 race. But there’s one way to make sure that you help to shape the data: VOTE!

Paris Part Deux

In my search for Metro maps to include in my last post, I looked through a lot of very interesting, very old guidebooks and maps. There are, of course, standard features in these types of resources. Guidebooks all mention exchange rates, how to take the Metro, and what to see in the Louvre. Maps all have the major boulevards and monuments marked. But today I want to take some time and share some of the more unusual items that I came across. 



Detail from Guide-indicateur des rues de
 Paris Moyens de Transport by Leconte (1930)

 

The front side of this first map is a standard plan of Pairs, just like you would find in any guidebook. Turn it over, however, and you find an illustrated map of all of Paris' most noteworthy and impressive monuments. As it only lists main roads (and no Metro stops), this may not be the most helpful map if you are trying to get from your hotel to that cute cafe off the beaten track, but the charming (and detailed) illustrations of Paris' churches and monuments more than makes up for it.




Detail from map of Pere Lachaise from Paris and its environs
 ed. Muirhead and Monmarche (1921)

 

Every good guidebook is going to have a map of the entirety of Paris. The best ones, however, also have maps of other attractions. One of my favorite examples is the lovely map of Pere Lachaise Cemetary that can be found in Muirhead's Paris and its Environs. Today, some of the most popular gravesites in Pere Lachaise are those of Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, and Jim Morrison. This map, published in 1921, does not include any of those gravesites, but it will lead you to the graves of Honore de Balzac, Moliere, Chopin, and the famous lovers Heloise and Abelard.





Then there is this little gem that promises a tour of Paris (including Versailles and Fontainbleu) in just four days. The guide has itnieraties for both the morning and afternoon of every day, with a special evening trip to Versailles on the last day. For each excursion, the traveller is provided with a starting point (including the relevant Metro stop) and a one-page map of the walking route with descriptions of all of the noteworthy attractions along that route.While most of our guidebooks from the turn of the turn of the twentieth assume a minimum of three weeks or so to explore the city, this pocket-sized volume offered a quick and dirty tour of the City of Light for the traveller with less than a month of free time.  Personally, I think I would be too exhasuted to stand by the end of this whirlwind tour.

Finally, there is this map from 1924, published by the department store Bon Marche. Like many maps printed for tourists, this includes a list of relevant monuments and museums to visit. This map is special in that it includes a list of libraries, churches, chapels, and synagogues for the conveniece of the traveller. It not only lists the famous Catholic churches and cathederals that one typically associates with a visit to Paris, but includes the headings "English and American Chapels," Calvinist Chapel," and "Lutheran Chapel." There is even a listing for what is now called the Great Mosque of Paris, although at the time that this map was published, the mosque was still under construction as you can see in the image below. 

Detail from Plan de Paris: dresse specialement pour les magasins du Bon Marche by H. Trope (1924)
Construction on the Great Mosque of Paris was not completed until 1926.



A Ride on the Metro

In my experience, it is almost impossible to get lost in Paris. As long as you have a Metro map, you can find your way to anyplace in the city. Recently, I took a look at some of the older Paris Metro maps in the Clark Library's collection. The oldest and newest of these maps were both printed for promotional purposes by the department store Galeries Lafayette. The other two maps are fold out pages from guidebooks.

This first map from 1900 is one of those published for Galeries Lafayette. It is a standard map of Paris with a translucent overlay of the Metro system. Although very fragile, this map surely would have come in handy for the disoriented traveler.

Paris: edition speciale des Galeries Lafayette Paris, by George Dreyfus (1900)

This next map is 10 years older and shows very few changes from the 1900 map.



Plan de Paris divisee en 20 arrondissements, by L. Guilmin (1910)

This map is from Muirhead's Paris and Its Environs (1921). It has not only the Metro lines marked, but also bus routes, boats, streetcars, and railways.



From Paris and its environs, edited by Findlay Muirhead and Marcel Monmarche (1921)



This stylized map from 1925 is another printed for Galeries Lafayette and looks a little more similar to the Metro maps that we use today, although the lines are not yet color-coded as they are on modern Metro maps.



Plan de paris en vingt arrondissements : avec les lignes du Metropolitain et du Nord-Sud dresse epecialement pour les grands magasins aux Galeries Layfayette (1925)

Of course, if you're looking for a map to take on your next vacation, this might be slightly more helpful.





Not Your Family Vacation Atlas

Often, students and patrons seem to wonder what it is they can gain from our collections of map materials beyond the obvious uses, or the nostalgic, wanderlust aesthetic. And it's true, many maps are inspiring - they bring us to think about travelling to places we've never been, places we've never thought about. We use them as a very real guide on all sorts of trips. However, someone had to make those maps, and the process of making them is a historically and politically loaded one, that should be kept in mind when looking at any map.

Just yesterday, we exhibited (and continue to have on display) work by Community High's Melanie Langa on the mapping of the Arctic, which was greatly influenced by who was mapping it, how they related to the people that they were gathering information from, and what they were hoping that the arctic would look like. As her research shows, and as you can see if you drop by to see the exhibit, the Northwest Passage didn't turn out at all like the mapmakers had hoped; they're confusion in dealing with the Native Americans, and assumption that there would be a usable trade route through this uncharted land led to some very inaccurate, sometimes completely imagined maps of the Arctic.








There are also a myriad of politically and socially charged maps and atlases in our collection that may interest anyone skeptical of the weight that maps can hold in society. Just a few days ago I stumbled upon this gem:

 This is an atlas unlike any you've seen on a family road trip; it contains 10 maps and essays about the social issues involved in mapmaking. This book claims to provide a critical foundation for an area of work that bridges art/design, cartography/geography, and activisim." It questions why maps are they way they are, and how the map comments on or omits information from "globalization to garbage; surveillance to extraordinary rendition; statelessness to visibility; deportation to migration." You can read more about this atlas here: http://www.an-atlas.com/ or simply drop into the Clark and take a look for yourself.

If that isn't interesting enough for you, take a look at Frank Jacobs' book "Strange Maps: an Atlas of Cartographic Curiosities." This is a book compiled of blog posts (from his blog http://bigthink.com/blogs/strange-maps) by this odd map enthusiast. Though more overtly out-there, these maps have as much relevance as any others, as someone at some point in time saw fit to put the effort in to create them. Having grown tired of traditional maps, Frank started finding, posting, and writing about these maps. These include maps of countries had their war history been different, maps of imaginary places, and many more. Again, this book is available here in the Clark Library for anyone interested.