Since mapping seems to be the de rigueur route to engagement, I’m looking for more interactive ways to present historical maps, documents, etc. with a geospatial element. We already use HistoryPin (primarily for photos), but have found that to be fairly one-sided. I want the audience to actively participate, to have to work for it, not just present them with visualizations. Something which encourages our patrons to draw their own conclusions from historical maps and discuss or share would be magical.
I’m interested in learning more about the Omeka plugin Neatline (neatline.org/), VisualEyes (www.viseyes.org/), or any other open source tools that you all might know.
I have a decent amount of experience with Exhibit which is open source and you can set it up so that the information it displays is fed via a Google Spreadsheet. Initial set up requires HTML level skills.
I’ve also used Google Earth/maps fairly extensively for similar work. It’s not open source but Marble seems to be getting better at reading kml/kmz files so the actual data ought to be pretty portable.
I’m interested in this, both from a user and a librarian perspective. I think it’s a great and, in some ways, untapped tool for interactive engagement. I’ve seen and participated in IRL mapping outreach like this any number of times — places where I put a pin on a map to indicate where I’m from, etc. And we do this for some digital collections, but I wonder both if it actually leaves users feeling engaged, and if there are other ways to map beyond obvious geographic tie ins (photo sets, e.g.).