New York Public Library's Map Warper.
New York Public Library’s Map Warper tool helps you visualize how the landscape of a particular place has changed over time. I signed up for Map Warper specifically to complete an assignment in Professor Debbie Rabina’s Information Services & Resources spring 2013 course at Pratt Institute. What I gleaned from Professor Rabina’s assignment was that professionals in a service model environment should become more familiar with geographic information systems (and other tools) as they are being used more widely by researchers at all levels.
The basic function of Map Warper is to digitally align - or rectify - historical maps from their collection to match contemporary maps. In my opinion, Map Warper does so much more. Through this tool, NYPL is opening their amazing map collection (from all over the world) to the public and encourages visitors to interact with their collection to see what can be learned through geospatial information studies.
What is special about Map Warper, compared to other GIS tools I’ve dabbled with, is that it allows you to crop or mask the historic maps. Masking allows you to crop a historic map to the exact area you’re interested in, if not the entire area of the map. The example NYPL uses in their video tutorial on the homepage is Central Park. This seemingly small detail became quite a luxury for me while working with this tool. Similar tools I’ve found either don’t allow masking or it is much more difficult to figure out how to mask.
Example of masked and rectified map. [Central Park, 1860.] New York Public Library's Map Warper.
One particular aspect I wrote about in my review for this tool in my assignment for Professor Rabina’s class was on the topic of street name changes. Once you’ve rectified a map, you can adjust the transparency of the historic map and begin to see the differences more clearly. Similar to New York City, my home city of Baltimore, Maryland underwent street name changes around the early 1900s. This type of information is critical for some researchers because previous street names appear in city directories and archival materials from the time before the names changed.
Example of street name changes. [Queens, Part of Ward Four, 1907, updated 1912.] NYPL's Map Warper.
I’m particularly interested in using maps in this way for the Morningside Heights project considering my topic is the history of the natural and built environment of the neighborhood, and I know for certain that the rest of the team is interested as well. Maps can tie all of our topics together in a way that provides a unique visualization for visitors. This also makes me excited for Information Visualization, one of my courses for the fall semester.
