C&RL News October 2017 486 Emily McGinn and Meagan Duever We mapped it so you don’t have to Comparing online data mapping platforms Emily McGinn is digital humanities coordinator, email: mcginn@uga.edu, and Meagan Duever is GIS librarian at the University of Georgia Libraries, email: duever@ uga.edu © 2017 Emily McGinn and Meagan Duever ACRL TechConnect At the University of Georgia (UGA) Librar-ies’ Willson Center Digital Humanities Lab, we often help faculty members and students create research projects using new digital technologies. We have limited re- sources, but great ideas, and this article will share how we have solved common mapping research questions using web tools, most of which are free and accessible to any user on or off our campus. There are a lot of mapping platforms, both open source and proprietary, available. Each have their idiosyncrasies and limitations, and they can be difficult to fit to a specific research request. Our most common request sounds something like this: “I would like to make a map with the Neatline plugin on my WordPress site using Leaflet with a historic map basemap, a time slider, and showing four kinds of data.” For those who build maps all the time, you likely recognize that most of these ele- ments don’t go together, or would require quite a bit of custom work. It’s our job to determine what is actually needed and what level of complexity is required by the data. Ideally we will be able to help this researcher create a map independently. Though we count a GIS expert as a member of our team, we recognize that this is not the norm for everyone. Therefore, we will discuss the options we most often use with researchers so that, going forward, these researchers will be able to make their own maps using any data they may create. To help illustrate the differences and complexities of each of these tools with the types of data the researcher has, and the level of expertise they need to create their map, we have taken a set of data from an actual researcher, cleaned it, and sent it through four common mapping tools. Our data is from a history project that looks at the movements of 66 political pris- oners from Naples.1 The larger project, “The 66: A Story of Revolution, Suffering, and Escape at Sea on the Eve of Italian Unifica- tion,” looks at prison reform in England and Italy in the 1850s. We started with two pieces of data: a spreadsheet with the names of the 66 political prisoners and the latitude and longitude of their hometowns, and a map of 1850s Italy, which we georeferenced.2 We looked at the types of data each program can input, the features to display the data, and any analytics that can be per- formed. These are the things that faculty request most often. We are also looking for a program that can create a web-accessible map and, ideally, can offer student-level access for classroom use. Each of the tools that we will discuss here (Google Fusion Tables, Carto, ArcGIS and its online component ArcOnline, and Neatline mailto:mcginn%40uga.edu?subject= mailto:duever%40uga.edu?subject= mailto:duever%40uga.edu?subject= October 2017 487 C&RL News with Omeka) can do most of these things, but each one also has a limit.3 This article will help illustrate what gets left out in each program and the extent of each one’s capa- bilities. We will discuss these tools in order from easiest to most complex. Google Fusion Tables The first is Google Fusion Tables. It’s very easy to use. Fu- sion Tables are flexible when it comes to the form of the geo- g r a p h i c data. It ac- cepts ad- d r e s s e s with street, city, state, ZIP code (there is a daily limit, so plan accordingly), and latitude/longitude data. If you only have city, state informa- tion, Fusion Tables will place a marker in the center of that city (but only one marker per city). You can create a pop-up window from the other columns of your spread- sheet, in- c l u d i n g images if they have a URL, but all points will have a uni- form mark- er. The rest of your col- umns cre- ate a pop- up window to display information about each place. The result is a standard Google map that shows your data, but isn’t really customiz- able. Historic basemaps cannot be added. It is a Google product and can be shared and edited by multiple people at the same time, and the end result can be embedded in a website. However, this tool is no longer sup- ported by Google. It’s great for simply testing a dataset, and even better for a classroom project as the learn- ing curve is fairly shal- low. We hesi- tate to rec- o m m e n d this tool for long-ter m projects, as Google is no longer developing this prod- uct. While still active and available, it is no longer updated and could disappear without warning. Carto While Fusion Tables will create a fast, accu- rate, and user-friendly map, we have found Carto to be far more c u s t o m i z - able, while r e m a i n i n g usable for both faculty and stu- dents. The p r o g r a m is free and a v a i l a b l e on the web ( a l t h o u g h there is a paid ver- sion, the Prisoner data set using Google Fusion Tables. Prisoner data set in Carto with georeferenced basemap. C&RL News October 2017 488 free account is more than adequate). Re- cently added to the free account is a set of “builder” tools, which allows for more customization and can be linked to a class through Git Hub. From the same exact re- searcher spreadsheet we used above, with- out changes or further cleaning, we were able to create a custom map that is much more aesthetically pleasing than the Google Fusion Tables map. We were also able to add our h i s t o r i c map of Italy as a b a s e m a p u n d e r - neath our p o i n t s . The pop- up win- dow for each point is custom- izable. W i t h the new (as of May 2017) Carto Builder addi- tion to the free account, analytic functions are now available. A time slider feature is possi- ble (this ver- sion of our data lacked t i m e / d a t e information, so we were unable to try it). Another b e n e f i t i s t h a t C a r t o doesn’t re- quire local- hosting of t h e m a p s , instead it al- lows a way to embed or share the map with other web- sites. Carto is also being actively developed and is currently our go-to tool for having faculty members create maps. Though there’s a learning curve, both students and faculty members have been able to create their own maps using this tool. With a little knowledge of SQL, CSS, or JavaScript, the maps can be even slicker. QGIS (an open source GIS platform) also has a Carto plug-in that links to your Carto account for added flexibility. ArcGIS The next mapping tool is the most profes- sional and the most well-known, ArcGIS. ArcGIS is a suite of soft- ware from the company ESRI. Cur- rently there are both desktop GIS components as well as p r o d u c t s that run on a server or a mobile de- vice. ArcMap is the desktop component we use most of- ten. While ArcGIS is incredibly powerful, it’s also incredibly complex. Few faculty members or students in a Humani- ties field will come to us know- ing how to use ArcGIS. If you’re l u c k y e n o u g h to know s o m e o n e who’s fa- miliar with Arc, then this tool is amazing. But it’s difficult for the average person to learn quickly. This tool is built to do exactly what researchers are asking for: to use historic maps in conjunc- tion with their own custom data, perform Prisoner data in ArcGIS desktop. Prisoner data in ArcGIS Online with custom tile layer from Mapbox as basemap. October 2017 489 C&RL News analysis, and to create web-friendly maps. Most universities have an education li- cense with an administrator somewhere on campus, but it can still be difficult to acquire or for an individual user to ac- cess, all campus’ not being created equal. ArcGIS is great for a few reasons. For one, it can do calculations. Within our prisoner dataset, we can calculate the number of prisoners from each province, their dis- tance from other cities, the distance they travelled while incarcerated, or we could create a network analysis to show which prisoners would have crossed paths. ArcGIS is also an industry standard. It can create high-resolution maps that are great for print publications. ArcGIS has two options to turn these static maps into interactive web versions. One way is through the ArcServer com- ponent of ArcGIS that is an add-on to your university site license. ArcServer is not for the faint of heart, even for those fairly proficient with ArcMap. The easier and less complex way is to incorporate ArcGIS On- line, another subsidiary of ArcGIS. ArcGIS Online is a cloud-based mapping platform. Users can be added through the site license, or they can create an ArcGIS Public Account. The public account is more limited in its capabilities—including the limit of 1,000 features, no dynamic analysis—but is fine for most projects. We have found that the most efficient way to create incorporate ArcGIS is to create our shapefiles and georeference our maps using the ArcMap desktop application, zip them, and import them into ArcGIS Online for styling. The ArcGIS Online maps can be shared and embedded into websites. We can create complex maps with the sophis- tication of ArcGIS but in a size that makes more sense for the web. ArcGIS does offer web app templates and the ability to add your own web apps that allow for end user input. These apps offer the opportunity for students to add input to the map from their smartphone or tablet without having to pro- vide them with software. ArcGIS has a number of components available, and its complexity reveals the infrastructure necessary to create some of these maps. At its most complex, ArcGIS requires a license, a specific server setup, server space to host all of the data you cre- ate, and a website in which this data can be embedded. In short, ArcGIS does great work, but re- quires quite a bit of work behind the scenes. Also ArcGIS requires a PC, as it does not run on Apple products. However, at its simplest, users can ac- cess ArcGIS Online and use the pre-existing web apps. With these the researcher can access things like timelines and story maps, but loses the ability to customize the web components. In the long run, we find investing in learning ArcGIS (or its open source alter- native QGIS) to be the most advantageous, but these tools can certainly be used at a more basic level. Neatline Finally, we have Neatline, which we have found is the most recognizable by faculty members. Although Neatline is easy to use on the front end, we have listed this tool last as it requires more infrastructure on the back end than it might appear from its end prod- ucts. There are positives to Neatline that we do not get in the other programs. The most important to us is the ability to give students individual access to the map. In a classroom setting students can each add their own prisoners by hand, or create their own custom data. One important consideration for Neat- line is that you can only build maps inside of another tool called Omeka. Omeka is typically used to create web exhibits of some sort of collection or grouping of things called items. In our case, each prisoner would be an item, and we could then import each item/prisoner into Neatline to create a map. Omeka offers a free web version at Omeka. C&RL News October 2017 490 net, but to use the Neatline plugin to its full advantage, Neatline requires either a local install that includes a geoserver or third- party hosting from a company like acuGIS that will set up a geoserver and host your data. (This option is a good one if resources are limited and there is no local expert.) O n c e O m e k a i s installed, we can use the s a m e h i s - t o r i c m a p , and we can still use the s a m e h i s - toric spread- s h e e t , b u t t h e o n l y c o m p l i c a - tion is that Omeka does not import latitude and l o n g i t u d e . While it will carry over all your metadata, and information for your popups, you will have to make the points by hand. Though it’s not ideal, it’s good for classroom use. It’s easy for students to use and comes with a time slider option, which our professors really like. Neatline does not allow for any analyt- ics, nor does it allow for the export of the data. Once it is in Neatline, it’s there to stay. Migration to another platform is not an option. Conclusion We have used all of these options (and a few more) in our work with students and faculty at UGA. There are benefits as well as compli- cations to each of these pro- grams. We find that dis- cussing the actual needs of the proj- ect up front and discuss- ing the ben- efits of each program di- rectly with the faculty m e m b e r helps us to focus the project and produce the necessary results. As often as possible, rather than building the project for our researchers, we help the researcher learn the tool that they need. That way, the projects are theirs, and we’re here to help them with whatever specific piece they need for their work. As part of our job, we take the time to seek out and learn new technologies as often as possible, and we do our best to bring the most useful and the most appropriate tools to our faculty. This landscape changes rapidly and often. While we are always looking for the next great thing, the core of all of these projects is the geographic data. As we have shown here, the wrapper may change, but the underlying data, our spreadsheet with geographic information, is the constant. If this basic is well formed, we can preserve this work and recreate it again in the future, (continues on page 524) Web-based mapping tools Google Fusion Tables, https:// support.google.com/fusiontables/an- swer/2571232 Carto, https://carto.com ArcGIS, https://www.arcgis.com/ features/index.html Neatline, http://neatline.org/plugins Prisoner data set in Neatline in Omeka with georeferenced basemap. https://support.google.com/fusiontables/answer/2571232 https://support.google.com/fusiontables/answer/2571232 https://support.google.com/fusiontables/answer/2571232 https://carto.com https://www.arcgis.com/features/index.html https://www.arcgis.com/features/index.html http://neatline.org/plugins C&RL News October 2017 524 G r a n t s a n d A c q u i s i t i o n sAnn-Christe Galloway A private Lincoln and Civil War collection, amassed over the past 50 years by Frank J. Wil- liams (former Rhode Island Chief Justice and nationally known Abraham Lincoln authority), will be donated to Mississippi State Univer- sity (MSU). Williams, the longtime president of the Ulysses S. Grant Association, was pre- viously instrumental in relocating that group and its own archives to MSU nine years ago. The Frank J. and Virginia Williams Collection boasts rare historical memorabilia; priceless ar- tifacts; original, signed documents; ephemera; books published over a span of 150 years; and both original one-of-a-kind, and early mass- produced, artwork relating to Lincoln and the Civil War era. The collection, which the Wil- liamses will officially gift to the MSU Libraries, has been valued at nearly $3 million. Commit- ting themselves to providing perpetual support to maintain, study, and publicly display high- lights from the collection, the Williamses have also offered a promised gift of $500,000 for the creation of the Frank J. and Virginia Williams Research Fund—an endowment to MSU to cu- rate the material in the years to come. A c q u i s i t i o n s The George Clulow and United States Play- ing Card Company Gaming Collection—one of the world’s premiere collections of books about card games, games of chance, play- ing cards and chess—has been acquired by Vanderbilt University Libraries. The collection of approximately 1,000 volumes dating from the 15th to the 20th century was acquired from The United States Playing Card Company, which bought the bulk of the collection from the English playing card maker George Clulow Ed. note: Send your grants and acquisitions to Ann- Christe Galloway, production editor, C&RL News, email: agalloway@ala.org. in 1898 and have augmented and enhanced it over the past 100 years. Also included in the collection are archival records that document the development, design, and manufacture of playing cards in America. Playing cards prob- ably originated in China, though the earliest literary reference to a card game suggests an Arabic source. The books in the new Vander- bilt collection come largely from England, France, Germany, Italy, India, Spain, Switzer- land, and the United States. Subjects from the collection that lend themselves to teaching and research include the economics, mathematics, and social consequences of gaming, as well as the legal ramifications. Art students will be interested in the art of playing card design and students of mathematics and statistics will ap- preciate the tracts on the ambiguities and sci- ence of games of chance. In addition, there are theological diatribes and literary treatments related to gaming. regardless of the changes to the mapping tools themselves. Notes 1. To read more about this project, see History professor Steven Soper’s conference paper “Prisoners on the Stage of International Politics: The Evidence from Risorgimento Italy,” academia.edu/33521255/Prisoners _on_the_Stage_of_International_Politics _The_Evidence_from_Risorgimento_Italy. 2. We georeferenced the map (connected the historic image to current coordinates) in ArcGIS desktop. There are a number of tu- torials available online for georeferencing in ArcMap and QGIS as well as free web tools like Map Warper at http://mapwarper.net/. 3. A glossary of terms and tables of platform features is available at http:// d i g i . u g a . e d u / w p - c o n t e n t / u p l o a d s /sites/9/2017/09/Glossary-of-Terms.pdf. (“We mapped it...,” continues from page 490) mailto:agalloway%40ala.org?subject= academia.edu/33521255/Prisoners _on_the_Stage_of_International_Politics _The_Evidence_from_Risorgimento_Italy academia.edu/33521255/Prisoners _on_the_Stage_of_International_Politics _The_Evidence_from_Risorgimento_Italy academia.edu/33521255/Prisoners _on_the_Stage_of_International_Politics _The_Evidence_from_Risorgimento_Italy http://mapwarper.net/ http://digi.uga.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2017/09/Glossary-of-Terms.pdf http://digi.uga.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2017/09/Glossary-of-Terms.pdf http://digi.uga.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2017/09/Glossary-of-Terms.pdf