Where can I find information on the history of web mapping?
September 19, 2010 11:52 AM   Subscribe

I'm working on a few research projects that address early web mapping. What are the essential articles, texts & blog posts that I should track down?
posted by serial_consign to Technology (3 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
As an academic myself, my first thought is to head for some of the academic search engines (Google Scholar, Web of Knowledge etc) and do a search for some of the related terms.

A term you may need to use in some of your searches is "geoweb", which is the academic phrase that is used to describe web-based mapping (and associated concepts). A quick search through Google Scholar gives some articles that may be useful:

Web mapping 2.0: the Neogeography of the Geoweb (http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/121478959/abstract) - talks about changes since 2005.

The geoweb-a new paradigm for finding data on the web (http://www.icaci.org/documents/ICC_proceedings/ICC2001/icc2001/file/f15008.doc) - from 2001 - suggesting it was new then

The advanced search tools for these search engines can then be used to only look between certain dates (although beware that the term "geoweb" is relatively new).
posted by robintw at 11:58 AM on September 19, 2010


I assume with web mapping you mean interactive online cartography services. Are you more interested in technology, in interface and map interaction, in how these influenced spatial perception, or how it changed the market of (paper based) map publishers, or ... ?

Regarding the general history I do not know any summarizing papers, but maybe some pointers to early projects are helpful. It basically started with transferring GIS functionality into the web, often with very clumsy interaction. Lots of web map services (WMS) today still have many of the drawbacks (e.g. every navigation reloads the whole map), but also some functionality more consumer-oriented such as Google Maps did not provide (e.g. dynamic layer selection).

Google Maps started in 2005, which got an overwhelming response due to their innovative AJAX interface. There were other providers who did similar map services, earlier, such as maps.search.ch (Wayback archive from 2004), which already allowed seamless panning of a bigger map. Other services, such as Map24 (screenshot from 2006, now owned by Navteq) offered a Java applet providing vector based maps with semantic zooming and lots of great interaction mechanisms. But due to the simplicity, Google's visibility, (and the soon world wide map) Google Maps gained lots of users (again, no scientific reference, but a blog post from around the launch with telling comments: http://37signals.com/svn/archives/001051.php)

(As a European I never used MapQuest, and can't really tell anything about its early stages.)
posted by Henrik at 4:11 PM on September 20, 2010


Response by poster: "I assume with web mapping you mean interactive online cartography services. Are you more interested in technology, in interface and map interaction, in how these influenced spatial perception, or how it changed the market of (paper based) map publishers, or ... ?"

All of the above. Yes online services I'd at least like to find a summary of advances in interface & technology and the repercussions as to spatial perception would be nice as well. Thanks for the links/input robintw and Henrik!
posted by serial_consign at 7:41 AM on September 22, 2010


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