Charting the Landscape of Online Mapping 

Peter Cobb and Sasha Renninger  (University of Pennsylvania)

As part of the class Spatial Analysis of the Past (CLST545), students are gaining experience with the online presentation of the past in spatial terms.  One assignment involves studying the published accounts and guidebooks for travel and travelers through western Anatolia (Turkey) in the 18th and 19th centuries CE.  These books help us to understand time, distance, logistics, and routes prior to modern transportation technologies, thus providing insights about travel through this landscape in periods back to the Bronze Age.  The students are remixing and visualizing these accounts with online mapping tools for presentation to a wider audience.  In preparation for this assignment, a number of different potential online mapping tools were investigated for their suitability to this task.  In this talk we will review the goals of the assignment, the process of investigating multiple mapping tools, and then we will do a small workshop to introduce everyone to the tool we chose with a practical hands-on exercise.