Running a Community Georeferencing Event
The website OldInsuranceMaps.net is designed as a “georeferencing commons”, a crowdsourcing site where anyone with an internet connection can sign up and georeference historical Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps from the Library of Congress digital collection, using a friendly workflow directly in a web browser. Since the initial pilot project in 2022, multiple universities and community groups have carried out “georeference-a-thons”, where students and interested citizens alike come together for a few hours and process maps, usually of their own city. Some people work, some people look like they are working, and some prefer to browse the site and talk. More importantly, everyone gets to spend time looking at old maps together, and learning about the history of their community. This workshop will be begin with a demo of the platform and examples from past events, and we’ll move to a hands-on activity where all attendees will work together to georeference maps of Philadelphia or another nearby city. Attendees will leave with a good understanding of how this open source (and open data) platform works, as well as an idea of what it would take to facilitate a similar event in their hometown. Depending on attendee interest and experience levels, we can also look at ways to use the resulting georeferenced map layers in other web applications and research contexts.
Attendee Requirements: Attendees must bring their own laptops, and will need to create a free user account on the platform to participate. Especially helpful: Familiarity with using web map interfaces, and a love for historical maps!