Introduction
This project is designed to catalog and map the photo spots of Charles Cushman from between 1966 and 1967. Cushman (1896-1972) was an ametur photographer and graduate of Indiana university. To create this map, I used data from the Indiana University Digital Collection and ArcGIS to plot the locations and dates of Cushman’s photos from the aforementioned two years.
Sources
The data used in this project were taken from the Indiana University Digital Collection, and trimmed into two years worth of data by my professor, Dr. Mason. These data were extensive and largely organized, with specific dates, descriptions of each photo from Cushman’s journal, and some entries even noted the specific streets the photo was taken on. With that said, the data were not perfect. Some of the finer location details are missing in some of the entries, but other than that, not much cleanup had to be done.
Process and Presentation
First of all, before I could use the data in a map, I had to change some of the finer details to make it easier to read on the user’s end. For example, the years were only labeled “66” and “67,” so I changed that to “1966” and “1967” for the sake of clarity. Then, I used an online web map building tool called ArcGIS to plot each photo as a point on a world map using the location data in my dataset. Unfortunately, three of the photographs did not have a listed country or other location labels, and so I had to remove them from the map. Other than that small hiccup, the process was largely smooth sailing. I uploaded the data into ArcGIS, plotted the points, and edited the annotations of each photo to only present information I thought was useful or interesting when clicked. Rather than just listing the years that the photos were taken in the pop-up that appeared when a point was clicked, I decided to color-code the points by year, with photos taken in 1966 being shown in blue, and photos taken in 1967 being shown in red. I figured that this made the map easier to read at a glance, which helped tell the story of Cushman’s journey over those two years.
Significance
Creating web maps that showcase location data like this has some perks and some downsides. The main perks that I can see are how easy and versatile tools like ArcGIS are. Once you have the data cleaned, putting it in map form is very simple, and editing the map to include as much or as little additional information as you like is also pretty easy. With that said, it does take some practice to get the hang of these tools. In our DGAH class, it took me some time to learn the quirks of this tool, like how layers work. But once you get the hang of it, these tools really are powerful.
But web maps aren’t perfect. The main disadvantage they have is that while they can display a lot of information at a time, they have a limit, and reaching that limit can cause the map to become borderline unreadable. If you have too many points too close together, or too many different colors representing different things, the map can become chaotic and messy.
