Resources for Spatial Humanities

Sample data sets

Locations in Amsterdam depicted in art between 1550 and 1750. Source: Matthew Lincoln. ‘Middlebury_amsterdam: Data for 2014 Kress Digital Mapping and Art History Summer Institute.’ Zenodo, 2015. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.15461. GitHub.

Abby Mullen, Quasi-War Encounters. See related map of this data.

Natural Earth: cultural and physical data. Download Quick Start Kit.

Catholic dioceses in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Data compiled from Joseph Bernard Code, Dictionary of the American Hierarchy (1789-1964) (New York: Joseph F. Wagner, 1964), 425-26, and for the United States since 1963, Canada, and Mexico from http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/.

U.S. Cities and Populations. U.S. Census Bureau and Erik Steiner, Spatial History Project, Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis, Stanford University.

Will Thomas, et al., Railroads and the Making of Modern America (University of Nebraska, Lincoln, 2011). Historical railroad information for the United States in a variety of formats.

John H. Long, et al., Atlas of Historical County Boundaries, Dr. William M. Scholl Center for American History and Culture, The Newberry Library, Chicago (2010).

Jason Heppler, “Machines in the Valley” (2015).

Art auction data. Compiled by Spencer Roberts.

Tate Collection. Artist and artwork data sets. I have geocoded the artists.

National Historic GIS. U.S. Census data available via the NHGIS data finder. Or, download a set of data from the 1890 census with accompanying shapefiles. All the NHGIS state and county shapefiles simplified and reprojected. NHGIS data for Day 2

Occupy directory.

Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilizations.

The Atlantic Netowrks Projects.

Historic England data sets. © Historic England 2015. Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2015 The Historic England GIS Data contained in this material was obtained in May 2015. The most publicly available up to date Historic England GIS Data can be obtained from http://www.HistoricEngland.org.uk.

Gapminder. World demographic and health data. Gapminder food and Gapminder GDP.

Pleiades. Ancient place names and locations.

Her Hat Was in the Ring. Not spatial but could be.

A New Nation Votes.

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. An export from that database.

China Dimensions data collection.

Data Repositories

Datahub.

Data.gov

Data.gov.uk

Historical maps

David Rumsey Map Collection

Boston Public Library: Norman B. Leventhal Map Center

New York Public Library: Map Division

USGS topoView

Old Maps Online

Maps of Africa

Finding Spatial Data – A Variety of Maps

There are an increasing number of online historical map collections featuring scans of maps, plans, and globes from archives and personal collections. To understand the use of maps in scholarship, it is necessary to be familiar with as wide a variety of maps as possible, including digital maps and analog, maps that have been made by scholars and maps that have not. Below is a list of online mapping projects. Look through as many of these projects as you can. Your aim is to gain familiarity with projects involving maps and mapmaking, both by scholars and on the web generally.