Spring and Mid-Summer Updates 2024

Community Forum, publications, and more...

Hello! The last newsletter I sent out was over half a year ago, so a lot has happened in the meantime (including: I got married!). I'll get to most of the updates here, but hopefully will be able to follow-up sooner than later with more. Before going further, I'd like to welcome the 50+ new folks who have registered since the year started. Looking forward to hearing and seeing what you work on! Which is a good segue to the next point...

We have a new Community Forum!

Jeff Meyer at OpenHistoricalMap suggested that we make a dedicated category for OldInsuranceMaps.net within the existing OHM forum. This provides a permanent, external location to have discussions and post about what people are working on. So, please don't be shy, let us know what cities you are georeferencing (or have worked on in the past :)). Moreover, do you have a city in mind but haven't been able to georeference it yourself? Use the forum to let us know, maybe someone else would like to work on it with you. All questions and comments welcome!

Recent publications about OldInsuranceMaps.net

• Piloting a Sanborn Map Georef-a-thon for GIS Day 2023, WAML Information Bulletin, Western Association of Map Libraries. 2024. Josh Sadvari and Michelle Hooper

  • Josh and Michelle hosted a Georef-a-thon last fall at OSU Libraries using OldInsuranceMaps.net, and wrote this great piece about how it went (spoiler: really well!).

• Scroll through Time with the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, South Richmond News. February 12, 2024. John M. and Riley Champine

  • This article in the South Richmond News highlights historical maps on OldInsuranceMaps.net in Richmond, VA, georeferencing work completed by the URichmond DSL.

• Toward a Georeferencing Commons: A Crowdsourcing Case Study and the Creation of OldInsuranceMaps.Net (link for open access version), Journal of Map & Geography Libraries, March 2024. Adam Cox.

  • Finally, I've created an article-length abridgment of my MS thesis, which was the beginning of this whole project.

Stats!

• 220 cities have at least some maps georeferenced
• 550 maps (or "volumes"), completed or in-progress across all cities
• 17,500 individual layers within these maps
• 230 registered users

So much of this content has been created by staff and students at the URichmond DSL lab. They are doing fantastic work! This must be the largest Sanborn map georeferencing effort that has been undertaken in a public platform, by far.

Other new things

• New About website and documentation location https://about.oldinsurancemaps.net
• New Github organization for better repository management/namespacing: https://github.com/ohmg-dev
• New content about the underlying workflow structure: https://www.ohmg.dev/concepts

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Until next time,

Adam