OldInsuranceMaps.net News

Hello all,

I'm writing to share with you a few updates on the Sanborn map crowsourcing project: https://oldinsurancemaps.net.

This contact list consists of 1) registered participants on the site, and 2) people who have expressed interest but not registered. If you are in the latter category and would like to receive future announcements (there won't be many), please opt-in by replying to this email with "subscribe" (or sign up! 🙂 ).

Briefly:

1. Public info sessions at 12:00pm CDT tomorrow and Thursday (Zoom links below)
2. Extending the participation period until the end of May
3. Some progress updates

Public Information Sessions

These sessions are to show you around and give a little demo, open to anyone. I'll try keep the presentation portion under 30 min, and Q&A can follow. Content will be something like

1. ~10 minutes - Introduction to the project and how to navigate the site. Esp. for folks who just want to browse the old maps (no need to login!)
2. ~15 Minutes - Live demonstration of the georeferencing steps. Esp. for those who want to sign up and get involved

1. Wednesday, March 30th (tomorrow!) - 12:00pm CDT Join: https://lsu.zoom.us/j/97193673306
2. Thursday, March 31st - 12:00pm CDT Join: https://lsu.zoom.us/j/91784379593

I'll try to get recordings of the introduction and demonstration sessions on YouTube by the end of the week.

Note: I've heard from some special interest groups who would like a presentation and/or concentrated work session for their members in April/May. Please get in touch if your group would be interested in that.

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Study Period - extended through May

We have decided to extend the public participation period, largely so you can take advantage of some of the improvements that have been made to the site since it first launched (see below).

Status Notes

After the initial wave of interest, a number of bugs became apparent that needed attention. Fixing them took a minute and has led to a lot of improvements. (An immense thank you to user WallyKitty for so much testing and activity in the first month!)

By now, folks have done a lot of georeferencing and there is just so much content to explore on the site. So, if you signed up and loaded a volume a while ago, make sure to check back on it now because progress has surely been made.

Of the 267 volumes/editions I made available at the outset, 120 have been started, and there are currently 530 (!!) layers in the system. Some of the larger cities are looking really good, for example:

• Lafayette 1906
• Monroe 1909
• New Orleans 1885 vol. 1/vol. 2 (who's going to figure out West End??)
• Baton Rouge 1903 (downtown highlight I noticed the other day: "Hotel Grouchy")

Of course there's plenty to see in the smaller towns too, like I had no idea how much of Plaquemines has been carved away by the river. And if you look closely at Eunice, you'll see the paste-on correction slips that the Sanborn company would mail out to their subscribers (these aren't very common in the LOC collection, as far as I can tell).

Site improvements

If you signed up early on, you'll find some significant upgrades:

• An interactive preview map on each volume summary (like the links above) showing a mosaic of completed sheets. Makes it easy to see the city come together as a whole, and helps you determine which sheet will cover your part of town.
• Introduction of exclusive work sessions. Ensures that only one person can work on a given document/layer at a time (makes group sessions possible)
• You can now sort the volumes that have been started by how many documents are upreprepared (U), prepared (P), or georeferenced (G).

Finally, thank you to all of you on this list, your interest is my motivation! Looking forward to seeing what happens over the next couple of months.

Adam