Petr Pridal is the managing director of Klokan Technologies GmbH, a small Swiss company that develops geospatial applications for cultural heritage institutions. Klokan Technologies created Old Maps Online, a portal that allows users to search historical maps from libraries around the world by geographic location. The project aims to make these maps more accessible online and promote the map collections of participating institutions. Klokan Technologies is seeking help from institutions to contribute additional maps to the portal and provide feedback to further improve the technology.

1. Petr Pridal <petr.pridal@klokantech.com>
The British Library, London, UK, May 31st 2012

2. Who am I?
Managing director of a small Swiss company:
Klokan Technologies GmbH.
Innovative geo applications in culture heritage.
Software development services & customization
of open-source projects, participation on grants.
Clients: BL.uk, NLS.uk, David Rumsey (USA),
NationaalArchief.nl, MZK.cz, Swiss libraries, ...

3. OldMapsOnline.org
An easy-to-use gateway to
historical maps in libraries
around the world.

4. The project
Library catalogs & fulltext search fail on maps.
Search by geographical location / area
Indexing maps from several institutions
One click to view the map in high resolution
Free to access and open for contributions
Audience: general public, genealogists,
historians, academics, researchers

5. We want to...
Bring online visitors to the websites of
participating institutions to view the maps
Promote the map libraries and their content
Do proper crediting: logo and links back
Store only minimal metadata & thumbnails
Make it easier to discover the scanned maps
Boost the number of online visits of maps
Allow users to find maps from “deep web”

6. Zoom in or out, or drag the main map to
move sideways, until you can clearly see
the part of the world you want maps for.
You can also use the search field on the
top to find a place or define the
time period of interest with the sliders.

8. Sustainability
Project actively developed with the support
from JISC (UK) until January 2013
Basic maintenance covered until 2018
Google Ads to help cover the hosting costs
Participation on a future research projects
for improvements of the technology and
optimizations of the map management

9. Technology
Based on the MapRank Search technology
http://www.mapranksearch.com/
Released in 2010 by Klokan Technologies
for Swiss project Kartenportal.ch, improved
for Czech libraries and for David Rumsey
Useful for large metadata catalogs +
geospatial digital repositories.
Details in the article published in D-Lib:
doi:10.1045/september2011-oehrli

10. Technology
MapRank ranking: an advanced algorithm
calculating coverage similarity of geographical
area of query and area covered by every
document and combining it with map scale,
time range, predefined categories and
traditional full text search.

11. Technology
Data indexing implemented specifically to
provide ranked real-time results even for large
databases. Traditional R-Tree indexing or
Lucene are failing.
Server component: FastCGI, C++
Default user interface developed with Closure
JavaScript Library + Closure Compiler.

12. How can you help?
Use the system & send us ideas for
improvement and report bugs
Share: blog, twitter, facebook, google+
We are calling for institutions who would
like to include their maps. It is for free.
Institutions retain all the rights.
Submission of maps from individuals at
later point (technically more problematic)

13. Contribute
High resolution (300dpi+ or 2 Megapixel+)
maps with a zoomable viewer online
Permanent URL with direct access - no
password or payment required
Metadata with DublinCore elements
supplied in a spreadsheet (XLS). Later OAI-
PMH harvesting.
Bounding box (MARC 034, DCMI BOX, ...)
http://project.oldmapsonline.org/contribute

14. Bounding box

15. Bounding box encoding
MARC: field 034
034: $$dE0055700$$eE0102900$$fN0474800$$gN0454900
255: $$cE 5°57'00"-E 10°29'00"/N 47°48'00"-N 45°49'00"
DublinCore: DCMI Box
DCMI BOX: westlimit=5.9559; southlimit=45.818;
eastlimit=10.4921; northlimit=47.8084
ISO 19115 / FGDC / OGC

16. How to create such records?
BoundingBox Tool
+ Geoparser Tool
Georeferencer Tool

17. BoundingBox Tool
BoundingBox Tool: Cataloguing while
holding the physical maps - manual
selection of the area on an online map
(used by Swiss libraries, David Rumsey, ...)
Geoparser: Semi-automatic rapid process -
with suggestion of the area by analyzing
existing textual metadata.

18. http://boundingbox.klokantech.com

19. Georeferencer Tool
Enrichment of the online scanned maps
A tool which runs in a web browser
An online service - no software installation
Uses volunteers for metadata enrichment
Successful pilots in several institutions

20. 20

21. 21

23. Georeferencer
3D visualization (Google Earth)
Accuracy analysis (MapAnalyst)
Bounding Box (metadata enrichment)
Institution can internally generate geodata
(GeoTIFF)
Optional: WMS and WMTS for scanned
maps in libraries. One per revision.

24. Georeferencer
It allows to turn the existing online scans into
geodata in a web browser
3D visualization as a side product
Support true collaborative editing
It retains log of all operations (a la Wikipedia)
- you can adjust it with a few clicks

25. Georeferencer
Enhanced crowdsourcing support:
Motivation, competition, rewarding, progress
indicators, graphs - live widgets to include in
the websites of the library

26. Competitive
Crowdsourcing

27. Georeferencer
Easy integration with the institution website
with a simple API and “intelligent links”.
Widgets & live data outputs available.

28. Georeferencer
Target: open platform for personal online
research with maps
Development started and continues in
collaboration with R&D department of
Moravian Library in Brno, Czech Republic
Shared development costs with all
participating institutions
Future: Annotations (LinkedData), detection
of duplicates, support of map series, etc.

32. Old Maps Online Launch
Project announced in the end of February in
New York and London
Over 30.000 visitors per day on the website
after launch
Over 250.000 visitors since the beginning of
the project
Two servers in a load balancer to handle the
traffic after launch.

34. Publicity
Social Networks: Twitter, Facebook
Google Developer Showcase + Google I/O 2012
BBC History magazine online slideshow
La Stampa (Milan, Italy) newspaper
Gizmodo, Ars Technica, The Verge
Wired.jp (Japan), About.com Genealogy,
Playtech.r (Romania), Portsmouth News
(UK), ... TV spot in Catalonya: link

35. Old Maps Online
www.oldmapsonline.org
... thank you ...

36. Culture Globe / Europeana Globe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_2pOU1FO6k
Viewer for high resolution scans - mobile devices
friendly - replacing Zoomify
IIPImage JPEG2000 / TIFF emulating Zoomify