New York Public Library’s staff continue to do excellent work; this week, I learned about the the NYPL Map Rectifier tool. The premise of this tool is to connect historical maps of the city to modern maps. The project is still in the early stages, but I gather the long term idea is to make it possible to go back through mapping history. For example, you can see how Central Park and the surrounding area has been depicted differently in maps over time. I have done some work with historical maps and I always find it interesting how older maps sometimes follow different conventions: giving prominent attention to local businesses, for example, rather than cartographic precision. That often makes the maps more interesting for historical research, but it does raise problems when legal disputes have to be resolved using imprecise maps.

The map librarians at NYPL have also created videos to demonstrate how to use the service:

No related posts.