There are many different
ways to digitize a map. Rosenzweig talks
about scanning, OCR and typing. In this
week’s class video Professor Evans also mentions that he scanned the different
section of the map and then stitched each one together. He then added the zoom option so that he could
make tit a more workable map. The first
thing that would definitely be needed to digitize a map is to make a copy of
it, whether that is a photocopy, a scanned copy or a physical camera copy of
the item. Then depending on the size of
the map, quality of the picture and cost of the project other items can be
done. Other options on your map will really depend
on what the goal of the map is, so will adding movement, color, or text help
your map or not.
When thinking about
sources of digital materials you need to look at who is presenting these
items. Rosenzweig talks about how budget
will shape this process a lot. The
quality of work that can be digitize will be a lot better for say National
Geographic then one that would be found
on most twitter accounts. Although high
quality can be found on Ebay and Youtube it is not always the case. That being said I know that some people have
a lot of expensive cameras that produce excellent images, so social media,
Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr good quality can be found there as well.
Within my final project I
hope to get some good quality images but am honestly not sure that I lot of
these will have to be digitized.
Money is a big issue, as is technical support. If you have access to a 20"x30# flatbed scanner, it is easier to work with large images, than if you are trying to take photos of something with your iPhone and then combine. Tech support is also very important, and working in the non-profit education world, you will find people who can fix your network connection, but you aren't going to find people to help you with digitizing projects.
ReplyDeleteOf course,there are always copyright concerns.