Maps

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For my digital history project, I’d like to use maps to tell a visual story of a historical event. Currently, I’d like to catalog the creation of American land boundaries over time, complete with interactivity and information about what’s happening.

I got this idea from an exposé on Zeit – a Deutche newspaper – in which a German politician got his cellular records and gave them to Zeit to turn into a story. The implementation is amazing, and would be a fun and challenging learning experience both from a historical and technological perspective. This project would combine the linear, informative nature of blogs with the interactivity and open-endedness of online mapping.

All of the components needed to develop a project of this nature are well-documented through open mapping services like Google or MapBox. Research on historical borders and the stories behind why and how boundaries were created are probably Wikipedia articles available through Library of Congress, for example.