Scholarly record

SELECTED ASPECTS OF CREATING HISTORIOGRAPHICAL MAPS USING GIS

Tomáš Janata

Abstract

The paper deals with the creation of historical maps in the environment of geographic information systems on example of prepared historical atlas with an interim title Czech Historical Atlas. At the information age, efforts are being made to move cartographic products into the electronic Internet environment, large atlas works not excluding. The Czech Historical Atlas is a new piece of historical atlas cartography devoted to selected themes of the history of Czech Lands in the twentieth century and was, in accordance with trends of computerization, from the very beginning conceived as partially printed and digital. In preparatory phases of the atlas, it was necessary to solve the division of topics between the printed and electronic version of the atlas as well as to cope with the preparation of maps for digital distribution and the atlas environment as a whole. As carrying, the Esri platform was chosen ? partly using the concept of the Story Maps, partly common map applications. Parts of the content will be supplemented by opensource technologies. Important points that needed to be solved included the transfer of selected maps existing within ArcGIS and taken from the Academic Atlas of Czech History, which came out only as a printed publication, to the proposed platform, as well as the workflow of creating new maps in order to take advantage of all the electronic environment possibilities. It was necessary to solve difficulties in designing the map key, especially figural elements, together with issues of frequent alterations of frontiers in the environment of Central Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries.

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