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I just found your site and joined because I think, though I'm not sure, that it will help me preparing my classes. I teach history to undergraduates, and I want to create maps for my lectures. I want to create one uber-map of the whole world and then enlarge sections to focus in on the area we are studying. Please feel free to refer me to documentation if this is covered somewhere and I haven't found it. |
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I came across a site recently: http://maptal.es/ which lets you tell stories with maps. I imagine you could use this in certain types of history lesson presentations to chart historical events. Give it a try This is the kind of thing that can be done on the web using OpenStreetMap base-maps and various javascript tricks. When you say "create maps for my lectures" perhaps you're thinking of showing different features and modifying the map in some way. Again this could perhaps be achieved with javascript (Draw lines. Show coloured areas. Show markers) Lots of possibilities. Javascript libraries such as Leaflet or OpenLayers are the actual technologies involved there, with OpenStreetMap simply appearing as the basemap. If you wish to modify the graphics of the basemap itself, in fact OpenStreetMap may offer ways of doing this kind of thing too, but this can get very complicated. In the geo-data of OpenStreetMap we have a lot of data related to history such as castles and monuments. You might find HistOSM is a good way to browse these. But we add these things only where they exist and are still visible in the world today. For example it would not be appropriate for OpenStreetMap to hold data on the position of the London city wall, as it once was. This kind of mapping is tantalisingly do-able with the technology. Somebody could set up a new database for holding this kind of data somehow, and perhaps representing start and end dates for objects on a time-slider. Currently OpenStreetMap itself is not the right place for mapping things which once existed. It's something which has been discussed a lot. But as mentioned above... there's lots of ways to approach a vague question of mapping history |
Try to be more specific about what you want to do with the map.
There are some efforts to map historic features, but otherwise this is a map of current world.
If you need it just for general orientation, it can be useful.