OldInsuranceMaps.net

Since 2023, the Institute for Social Research at the University if Michigan has supported OldInsuranceMaps.net and used the platform to create new data to explore the effects of place-based factors on health in the United States. This work is carried out in conjunction with the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond.

Building on their research into redlining maps and spatial inequality, the Digital Scholarship Lab is assembling a dataset of environmental hazards in mid-century urban America. To support this effort, the lab has trained more than 30 student researchers on OldInsuranceMaps.net to georeference over 30,000 Sanborn sheets.

Many users have have georeferenced maps specifically in order to use them as reference data for adding content to OpenHistoricalMap. OIM provides web services that can be used directly in the OHM editor. Checkout hayleox's work in 1880s Cincinnati to see how historical data can be traced directly into OHM.

HistoryForge is a citizen history platform that facilitates transcription of historical census records. From the maps created during New Orleans georeference-a-thons, OIM provides web services that can integrate directly into the Southeast Lousiana HistoryForge web application, aiding the process of finding historical buildings.

In partnership with the Midlo Center for New Orleans Studies (University of New Orleans), we have held multiple georeference-a-thons over the past few years. Through these efforts we have created mosaics for vols 1, 2, and 4 in 1896, and vols 2 and 3 in 1908.

In early 2025 the Community Mapping Lab at the University of Georgia held an event to georeference maps of Athens, GA.

Rowan University's Center for Digital Humanities Research hosted the largest georeferencing event that OIM has seen to date; in one afternoon, 50 people georeferenced over 250 layers, covering a number of towns around Gloucester County, N.J. Read more in Rowan's student newspaper, the Whit.

To support their community history platform, Yesterdays, MapRVA creates georeferenced mosaics on OIM and integrates them into their own mapping interface, allowing contributors to spatially locate historical photos of Richmond, VA while using Sanborn maps as reference layers.

The Technical Assistance for Brownfields (TAB) group at Kansas State University uses OIM to create historical layers for numerous small towns and cities across the nation where they help communities identify and manage their brownfield sites.

Since fall of 2024, OIM has worked with researchers and students at Morgan State University's Center for Urban Health Equity to georeference FHA Block Data maps of over 100 cities across the US. These maps are crucial materials for understanding the history of redlining in the US, and we look forward to making them available here soon!

The OSU libraries have hosted multiple community events using OIM to involve students and citizens in the work of georeferencing maps of Columbus and nearby cities. The team published a paper in 2023 discussing their preparation for the events, and the positive engagement they had from attendees.

For GIS Day in 2024, we held a georeferencing event at the Healthy Regions & Policies Lab, and about 20 people from across campus and beyond put together mosaics of Champaign, Urbana, and even Homer!

The Chicago Urban Heritage Project creates mosaicked layers of Chicago in order to extract historically accurate building footprint data layers for visualization and analysis.

Haywood Mapping Service in Macon, GA, has georeferenced many small towns in the surrounding region, using the aggregated viewers on OIM to facilitate historic downtown walking tours.