Six Thousand and Counting
July 28, 2009
Six thousand maps is not a particularly large number. Wikipedia, for example, has quite a few more maps than that. The USGS has almost ten times that number in its 7.5′ topographic set alone. But that milestone was recently reached here at Cartoko after 7 active months of adding material (and describing it) in our spare time. Consider though that these six thousand maps constitute a mere beginning. A toehold on a mountain of maps yet to come.
The effort so far has been on the building of a core set of high-quality reference and thematic base maps to cover, at a basic level, the world at a global and national level. The United Nations recognizes 192 member states, and covering those, along with the oceans, seas, territories, as well as that little thing called Antarctica, takes some doing.
CURRENT STATUS AND NEXT STEPS
For logistical as well as copyright purposes, the national atlases of the United States and Canada have received special attention. These volumes contain a cornucopia of often highly-detailed maps portraying what was considered important aspects of the country at the time of publication. Likewise, the Country Studies published by the Library of Congress are also completely online, and feature many easy-to-read historical and thematic maps.
Besides continuing to add other new sources, the next push is to begin to systematically develop major sets of pages. Countries, world themes, and the like. This involves both ensuring that all relevant maps in the database are on the appropriate pages, and experimenting with new features and geoweb technologies to provide more useful results. Look for that to begin by late August.
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