Map Librarian / Artist / Teacher focused on user-centered design, informal learning in GLAM, new uses for old maps, collaborative interdisciplinary problem-solving, and the interplay between technology and culture.

I am on a quest to find a truly lightweight workflow for creating collections of digital maps from multiple repositories using IIIF for use in library instruction.

I created this Mirador Gallery showing eight different versions of John Mitchell’s mid-eighteenth century “Map of the British and French Dominions in North America” in GitHub pages by following Tim Sherrat’s instructions for installing Mirador, which you can read at the following link:

https://github.com/wragge/mirador-ghpages

Once deployed, one only has to paste IIIF manifest link URLs into a text document called manifest_urls.txt in the main directory, or alternatively, upload manifest files to a designated directory.

There are a few easy customisations that can be made, like changing the default gallery view to “mosaic” instead of the inherently chaotic “elastic” view.

In my installation I have disabled image editing tools, and image annotations were disabled by default.

Drawbacks of this method are lack of an ability to see titles in a satisfying way, lack of visible dates, the table of contents is hidden and lacks useful info, but these are all Mirador complaints.

If we used this method of creating image colllections for individual class visits, we would have to make a new repository for every class, but built-in automation makes this pretty doable.

This could work for student projects since Github pages are hosted for free.

Of course, the ideal solution would also somehow also incorporate georeferencing capabilities.

Hypothetical Classroom Demo

Create a personal map viewer

  • Search for maps (tutorial)
  • Define a question (group work)
  • Select up to eight maps (independent work)
  • Work in Github (create account and familiarize with software before class, probably, via tutorials)
  • Use template to create new repository
  • Lightweight configuration
  • Add URLs to txt file

Mirador on GH Pages courtesy of Tim Sherratt 

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