Georeferencing old maps by first year students
ISBN 978-85-88783-11-9
Authors
1Heere, E.; 2Van Egmond, M.
1UTRECHT UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES Email: elger.heere@hu.nl
2UTRECHT UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Email: m.vanegmond@uu.nl
Abstract
The Utrecht University Library manages a large amount of maps. An effective way to enclose this collection is to georeference the maps and show them on Google Earth. One librarian will never be able to georeference some 200.000 cartographic documents, so the help of the crowd is necessary. The experience some georeferencing, the Library and the University of Applied Sciences joined together in a small project, where in two sessions 120 water management maps and 100 fortification plans were georeferenced. The maps and plans were georeferenced with the online tool Georeferencer. With this tool it is possible to georefence digitized maps as a crowdsourcing project. The Utrecht University Library is the first library in The Netherlands which uses this tool. The georeferencing was performed by first year students, who study Geodesy / Geo-Informatics. For them it was a first introduction to work with old material, which gave specific problems. The experiences with these students can be used to design a large crowdsourcing project.