Historical Data Provenance

This page is for identifying issues related to identifying sources of historical map information.

For example, a single street may be different

Tagging multiple sources for the same data

Using semicolons to tag way information has strengths and weaknesses, but it's not clear that this is the proper way of tagging.

Current practice would be to do something like this:

source=1912 Baist Map; 1908 Sanborn Map; 1914 Sewer Plumbing side map

Alternate sourcing should be evaluated for great descriptive information to illustrate how the data was identified (note: this is proposed by a data format rube!):

source:name=1912 Baist Map; source:URL=baisturl; source:year=1912; source:notes="different from Sanborn & Sewer; ignored"; source:researcher=jeffmeyer;

source:name=1908 Sanbron Map; source:print=yes; source:year=1908; source:isbn=SanbornISBN; source:notes="agrees with Sewer & photographs"; source:researcher=araymond;

source:name=1914 Sewer plumbing side map; source:print=yes; year=1914; source:location:"Seattle Municipal Archives"; source:researcher=afiler;

Mapliography

Properly annotating the sources of all map data in a lower-right or lower-left hand corner of a map display could become unwieldy quickly. There needs to be a way of both (a) properly citing sources of historical mapping information, and (b) not overly cluttering the resulting map display.

One concept is the idea of a mapliography - a link i the lower-right hand side that might say something like:

Multiple sources and copyrights

With a link to a "Mapliography" listing all sources of information and ways related to those sources. This list might be broken down into a Copyright list and a sources list.