"Physical Map of Palestine and the adjacent countries"

"Physical Map of Palestine and the adjacent countries"
Originally uploaded by Special Collections at Wofford College
A finely-detailed, hand-colored, fold-out map from John Kitto’s The Land of Promise, “a topographical description of the principal places in Palestine, and of the country eastward of Jordan, embracing the researches of the most recent travellers.” Published in London, c. 1852.

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How Archivists Helped Video Game Designers Recreate the City's Dark Side for 'L.A. Noire' | History | SoCal Focus | KCET

Earlier this week, video game enthusiasts and fans of L.A. history cheered the release of Rockstar Games' L.A. Noire, a police procedural game noted for its faithful reproduction of Los Angeles circa 1947. To recreate a city now hidden beneath 64 years of redevelopment projects and transformed by age and expansion, production designers with the game's developer, Team Bondi, consulted several Los Angeles area archives.

Designers consulted street maps created by the city's planning department and the Works Progress Administration, aerial photography combined with topographical information from the U.S. Geological Survey, photograph collections from the University of Southern California and UCLA, the police blotters of historical newspapers, and the papers of writer Raymond Chandler to reconstruct an historically accurate 1947 Los Angeles. Also, in promotion of the new game, the L.A. Times and Rockstar Games collaborated on this "special archive edition Crime Map" that presents newspaper accounts of real crimes from 1947 on an interactive map.

Google Maps | Mississippi Flooding Spring 2011

Just in case you'd managed to forget recent frightening natural phenomena, Google Maps has you covered.

HyperCities Egypt - Voices from Cairo through Social Media

This is a pretty darn cool digital humanities project out of UCLA:

"HyperCities Egypt" streams and then archives tweets from protesters in Cairo who are taking part in the pro-democracy push that has captured the world's imagination since Jan. 25.

"You just let the program run, and you almost feel like you're there," explained Yoh Kawano, a member of the UCLA Center for Digital Humanities program, who built the program's interface. "It collects tweets live from Cairo and displays them in real time on a map."

Subtitled "Voices from Cairo through Social Media," the program displays a new tweet every four seconds over a digital map of Egypt's capital. Because it gathers tweets from those who have enabled Twitter's "add location" function, the program also maps the precise location in Cairo from which they were sent. And the Twitter users' avatars — often photos of the protesters themselves — accompany the poignant messages, providing a moving immediacy to the experience.

(Via Resource Shelf.)

Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Maps and Information

+ UPDATE: New Database: Oil Spills Since 2000 (U.S.)

+ UPDATE: Gulf of Mexico – Transocean Drilling Incident
A one-stop show with the updates; maps, images, news releases, info for and from specific states, etc.
Content from: DHS; NOAA; USCG; bp; and Transocean.

A Twitter Stream and Facebook page from DeepwaterHorizon are are also available.

+ Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Map – Forecast through May 3 (NOAA)

+ Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill – Maps and Images (U.S. Coast Guard)

+ Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill [map updated each evening] (NOAA)
Note: Make sure to scroll to the bottom of the page for MANY MORE resources.

Source: NOAA, USCG (via THE WONDERFUL Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection at the University of Texas at Austin)
Need a geographic related map? You can usually find it at Perry-Castañeda Web Site

via Resource Shelf.

Using technology to bring relief to Haiti

Aid and relief workers are utilizing volunteer-driven technology to map the shattered city of Port-au-Prince. This resource is available on the web and as an iPhone app.

From the article by Brady Forrest:

"Crisis Mappers from around the world have been working around the clock to create maps and other tools for relief workers in Haiti. The earthquake caused tremendous damage to the road network and updated maps are necessary to enable food and volunteers to traverse the island.

The volunteer-driven Open Street Map project has become a central data source for the Crisis Mappers. It is regarded by many as the most up-to-date map of the area. It combines UN damage assessment, digitized imagery, Public Domain Topos and other base data."