By: Tyler Dimond
I decided to pick the locations that I find myself going to the most. I really enjoyed being able to really personalize how I pointed these areas out on my map. I changed the point marker to make it look like a big red target so that it’s unmissable. I also drew some house-like polygons around each one to show the rough area of each area. I enlarged the location names as well in order to see exactly what each location is. I changed the color of one of the polygons to red, as seen around Brooks 103 because I’m there the most out of any of the locations I marked.
The overall process was really simple. I found the latitude and longitude of each place by finding it on google maps, right clicking where I wanted the coordinates for, and copying it. I put these into an organized spreadsheet and then took that file and threw it into ArcGIS Online. The points instantly lined up and I easily customized the map to my liking.
The possibilities for web mapping are endless. Web mapping has a lot of potential for Digital Humanities because it lets us connect information to real places. Instead of just reading about history, culture, or social life, we can physically visualize where things happened and how they relate to each other in space. This can make patterns easier to notice, like how people move through a city, where important events happened, or how communities change over time.
Web maps help make research a lot more interactive. They give us the opportunity to click on locations and explore data ourselves rather than just reading a boring text. That can make humanities research more engaging and accessible to a wider audience. Overall, web mapping helps turn humanities research into something visual and exploratory. It adds a layer to stories, history, and culture that you wouldn’t get from text alone.