Wikipedia:WikiProject historical atlas
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Wikipedia:WikiProject historical atlas has the aim of creating a historical atlas.
Participants:
- Daanschr
- Ashibaka
- Tblazko
- Xaxafrad
- Briangotts (talk • contribs)
- R9tgokunks (talk • contribs)
[edit] Tasks
(see discussion on the talk page)
- At the moment we are searching for the right systems that can be used to develop the software. GMT will probably be used.
- This project will probably be split into two sections (see talk page).
[edit] Expertise
- Tibor is a programmer and main developer.
- Chris will be Tibor's assistent.
- Daan has access to +/- 50 historical atlases, ten minutes by train. He is also a historian with a bachelor degree and knows the problems and possibilities of historical research.
- 52 Pickup wants to cooperate with us based at the Wikipedia:WikiProject Former countries/Cartography.
- Electionworld is working on a Wikimedia Atlas of the world at commons, which includes a historical section which will be partly administered from this project.
[edit] Noteworthy examples of electronic historical atlases
- The Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection at the Library of the University of Texas has a huge collection of public domain historical maps. Especially useful is the entire 1923 Historical Atlas by William R. Shepherd general history atlas and the 1912 Cambridge Modern History Atlas which is available there. Many of these maps have been loaded onto Wikimedia Commons already. There are a large number of free maps at the commons, in Category:Old maps and Category: maps and their various sub-categories.
- Centennia is more than ten years old and has not been updated since. It is not for free and only depicts the situation of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East from AD 1000 to 1994. Maps divide a year into ten parts and cover not only borders of countries, but also the extents of military campaigns. Especially impressive is the Mongol conquest of the Middle East and Eastern Europe. A free version is available which only covers 1792-1820.
- Exemplars: the TimeMap samples (a series of avi and/or swf files). They say their program is open source, but I think they're really using a proprietary open-source license (not that I was able to get their program running on my machine).
- Historical atlas of Europe at the beginning of each century from 1 CE to 2000 CE. Commercial; online samples and low-res versions available free.
- worldhistorymaps.com 2500 years of world history in yearly maps, though very much a commercial venture; only listed here for comparative purposes.
