Collaborative Reusable Map Annotation

Historical maps are valuable resources for humanities research, offering insights into past landscapes and patterns of human activity. Maps are more than images; they represent spatial and cultural relationships that may be anchored to the physical world, and often embed narratives of power, identity, and change, such as shifts in place names or symbolic representations. They vary widely in form, type, content, level of detail, and granularity of the information they present. At the same time they are material objects, cultural artifacts, with distinct physical characteristics and complex biographies of their own. Historical maps also come with challenges: they often lack modern geographic precision, may contain outdated or biased perspectives (which are nonetheless of historical significance), or show signs of physical wear, among other issues. Moreover, access to the information they contain is often limited, as searching through map collection catalogues typically relies on record metadata (i.e., basic information, such as title, creator, or date) and not the full content of the map. Map annotation provides a means to address these issues by enabling scholars to encode features, comment on the content, link place names to gazetteers or other authority files, transcribe text on maps, document historical or cartographic context, etc. Apart from supporting scholarly analysis, this process can transform static maps into searchable and machine-readable resources, by enriching the map metadata and allowing text search indices (Rainer et al. 2019). Developed within the ATRIUM project, this workflow supports collaborative annotation and geo-tagging of historical maps, transforming them into rich multilayer resources. It addresses both technical interoperability and data reusability, with outcomes that can enhance catalog records, improve search capabilities, feed into analytical pipelines, and support data visualizations, or even enable the creation of critical editions of maps. While primarily tested in Recogito Studio, the workflow is designed as tool-agnostic, ensuring flexibility and reusability across different tools, projects and teams. Its steps are not strictly linear; annotation is an iterative process and teams may revisit earlier phases (e.g., revising vocabularies during annotation) or run tasks in parallel or in alternation (e.g., linking to vocabularies and gazetteers). This iterative design allows teams to adapt to evolving insights and technical constraints. Note: This workflow is intended for manual annotation.

References:

• Reckziegel, M., Wrisley, D. J., Hixson, T. W., & Jänicke, S. (2021). Visual exploration of historical maps, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 36 (Supplement_2), ii251–ii272, https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqaa059
• Rainer, S., Vitale, V., Kahn, R., Barker, E. & Isaksen, L. (2019). Revisiting Linking Early Geospatial Documents with Recogito, e-Perimetron 14 (3), 152–63, https://www.e-perimetron.org/Vol_14_3/Simon_et_al.pdf