Building an Online Map Library as an Evolving Cultural Atlas
David Rumsey, President of Cartography Associates and Director of Luna Imaging, Inc

Physical map libraries are like published atlases: they are fixed in their content and tools. An online digital map library is quite different – it is like an atlas that continually evolves and grows, breaking out of its binding and republishing itself all the time. Rumsey will discuss his experience in building his own online map library, www.davidrumsey.com, and how he discovered, particularly through his relationship with ECAI, that an online map library can function as an evolving Cultural Atlas. By joining historical maps with modern geospatial data and by combining content with other cultural collections, Rumsey’s site crosses physical and subject barriers. In order to accomplish this, several kinds of technologies are used: sophisticated image databases, GIS, virtual reality, gaming software, as well as Web designs that knit all these tools together. The end result is an online library architecture that enables mediated and unmediated experience as site visitors seek to envisage the geography of the human past.