IIIF for Educators

Lab Activity: Browsing and Examining Maps (with cropping)

💡 Concept

Maps are rich sources of information about the past. Historical maps are unfamiliar to many people, but with a bit of practice anyone can learn to read them.A great way to start is by simply looking closely at a map and making observations. Maps are rich visual representations of places, people, and things in spatial relationships. They typically combine images and text, and can depict real or fictional locations and events. All maps leave out some information in order to make the things that they do contain more legible, or easier to see and understand. The symbols used to convey a map's meaning can be examined for clues about the maker's perceptions, priorities, beliefs, and biases. Some maps clearly convey messages about how they were intended to be used, but some maps from the past can be difficult for us to interpret on their own.

Historical maps of the American West, roughly defined as what is now known as the United States west of the 100th parallel, reveal how geology, topography, and climate have shaped the area's history, development, and public policies. Over time, cartographic representation has helped to both reflect and advance competing narratives about the region and its inhabitants and has shaped public understanding of western identity, resource conflicts, and policy debates. The maps collected below demonstrate the complexity of this mythology and the powerful role cartography has played in constructing ideas about "the West."

🖥️ Activity

In this activity you will browse a curated selection of digitized maps representing aspects of the story of the American West from the David Rumsey Map Collection, choose one for close inspection, and spend some time looking for details and clues about its historical context. Using the cropping tool in the Tools section below, you will capture details of maps that suggest a particular meaning, help you to understand something about the map's purpose, or make you wonder why the author chose to include them on the map.

In a subsequent visit to the map center, you will view and examine the original archival objects represented by the digital images collected here. This activity will both familiarize you with the content before the visit and give you an opportunity to practice analyzing cartographic imagery.

📍 Location

The David Rumsey Map Center is a unique facility which pairs an extensive collection of maps, globes, and atlases with a suite of technology tools for discovering, viewing, and transforming high-resolution images of historical cartographic objects.

Our staff is here to help you use this space and these collections in scholarship.  

The  Center is housed on the fourth floor of the Green Library. The entry to our stairwell is just off the Munger Rotunda of the Bing Wing, which is located on the second floor. The portal monitors at library entry desks can help you with directions and will assist with special elevator access if you need step-free entry. 

👓 Examples

Here are just a few map details cropped from our collection to give you a sense of the variety of information presented on them.

🧱 Materials

Open collection in new tab

🛠️ Tools

IIIF Cropping Tool
Click here to open and use the Cropping Tool to select image details for your discussion post (instructions are in the Steps section below.)

🪜 Steps

Part 1: Browsing
For this first part of the activity you will take a look through all the curated maps in the map gallery

1. Click on any thumbnail to open a zoomable version in the pane to the right.
2. Resize the zoom window by dragging the grey divider line to the left or right.
3. Hide and show the viewing pane and/or input panel using the corresponding links in the header.
4. Click the View Item link in a map card to see the item in the original catalog record.

Part 2: Examining
Once you've viewed them all, you will choose one map to look at more closely

1. Start by identifying some essential information about your map:
   • Is there a key or legend? If yes, it may contain other essential information.
   • Information about its creation. (Don't just copy this from the map card! If you can find it, say where it is on the map.) 
     • Author / Publisher 
     • Title
     • Date published
   • Language
   • Format (e.g. book, flat map, folded map, pamphlet, globe, etc.)
2. See if you can tell what purposes this map was made for: what indicators or clues can you find in the map about its intended use? 
3. Take a look at the print, lettering, symbols, colors, and illustrations: what do you notice? Is there anything that stands out to you, or is unexpected?
4. What is the historical context of publication/creation? Think about what you know about the time and the place where it was made. What indicators or clues can you find in the map about this context?
5. What is the argument or point-of-view of the map? What does it show and what does it omit?
6. After examining it closely, do you have questions about the map? What are you wondering about it?
7. Go back to the collection of maps. Are there any that seem related to yours in some way? What connections do you see?

Cropping a IIIF image
To select a portion of an image 

1. Click thumbnail to load in the IIIF Cropping Tool viewer
2. Zoom and view
3. To crop a detail from the image, click the white pencil icon, and highlight the desired rectangle by clicking and dragging a rectangle from corner to corner
4. A thumbnail of your selected detail will appear in a slider at the bottom of the Cropping Tool. You can repeat to collect multiple details.
5. Click the Copy icon on the left side of the thumbnail

Posting with an image
To add image details to a discussion post

1. Click Reply
2. To enter your image details, simply paste into the text field
3. Images can be manually resized by highlighting and dragging their corners
4. Repeat for additional images

✉️ Share

Use this discussion forum to share your observations about maps and your map with peers. Submit a reflective post of approximately 40-60 words describing what you learned about your chosen map from your own close examination, following the questions in Part 2 above.

Tips: 

• • Use only the map, the information visible on the card, and the catalog record, and do not refer to outside sources.
  • It's ok if you're not able to answer all of the questions -- just say that you couldn't find the information. 
  • It is fair play to use digital translation tools to read text in languages you don't understand, just mention this in your response.
  • There are no wrong answers! The point of this exercise is for you to practice looking closely and interpreting what you see. 

Post by [date]

🤝 Collaborate

Once you have submitted your own post, take a little time to look through submissions by your peers in the discussion forum. Do any resonate with your own observations? Did you learn something interesting or unexpected that you hadn't noticed about your own chosen item? Reply to at least one post by your peer and tell them about it. 

Interact by [date]