Have you ever wondered what would happen to your map of points if while converting your coordinates from latitude/longitude in degrees, minutes, seconds (DMS) to decimal degrees (DD) you messed up the math? Ever seen a weird tartan-like plaid pattern emerge on your map from points that were suppose to be uniformly spread out over…. More.
Mr. Voronoi, meet the US state boundaries
In the Scholars’ Lab we are working with remarkably detailed datasets showing changes to US political boundaries over time. We’ve all been fascinated with visualizations where the familiar outlines of the US states emerge from thousands of boundary changes to their underlying counties over the last few hundred years. Did you know Virginia once spanned…. More.
The 1907 Massie map of Albemarle Co.
While going through our archives of scanned maps, we recently ran across a copy of Frank A. Massie’s 1907 “A new and historical map of Albemarle County, Virginia” [Special Collections, University of Virginia Library], commonly referred to as the Massie map, which contains a wealth of detailed historical information for the county in which the…. More.
Calculating county-to-county distances with GIS
In the Scholars’ Lab we recently worked with a researcher whose study areas focused on several groups of US counties. Of interest was the distance from every county within a group to every other county in that same group. We used geographic information systems (GIS) software to calculate these distances.
Institute for Enabling Geospatial Scholarship
Through the generosity of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Scholars’ Lab will host a three-track Institute for Enabling Geospatial Scholarship at the University of Virginia Library in November 2009 and May 2010. This Institute will bring scholars, cultural heritage professionals, and software developers together to support and develop geospatial projects and methods in…. More.
Mapping the Digital Diaspora of a Dissertation Research Blog
At the onset of my field research in summer 2007, I launched a blog – YellowBuzz.org – with the intention to: 1) archive and organize my field notes in textual and audio-visual form; 2) convey my research purpose and progress to informant musicians and the public; 3) self-position as a “participant” in the scene. Since…. More.
Illuminating Historical Architecture
Following up on my introduction to using 3D models to recreate archaeological sites and perform meaningful academic analysis on simulated virtual environments, I will discuss in further detail my current project concerning the recreation of the House of the Drinking Contest in Seleucia Pieria, the port city of Roman Antioch.
Mining and Mapping Apocalyptic Texts, Part 2
As I explained in my last blog post, my dissertation will compare several statements about the final fate of humankind in Paul to similar statements in apocalyptic texts. In that post, I described how text-mining could help with the interpretation of the texts which stand at the center of my dissertation. In this post, I…. More.
Mapping Regional Language Use
So for the thousandth (or so it seems) time I’ve gotten into this discussion with my friends from the East Coast and Midwest (I’m from Texas) about the correct way to refer to a sweet carbonated beverage, and I have finally got to thinking about ways to map locally spoken slang and jargon using GIS. …. More.
Rome Reborn
My wife and I frequently engage in a strange kind of “culture war.” She thinks ancient Rome is the more interesting civilization, and I’m partial to ancient Greece. In these debates, I always tell her that I prefer philosophers to politicians. Still, I was excited when I first encountered Rome Reborn, a joint project between…. More.