Digital Scholarship Resources

Spatial humanities is an interdisciplinary sub-field of digital humanities that utilizes spatial tools and methodologies to explore the role of space and place in human culture, experiences, and history. Emerging from the "spatial turn" in digital humanities, it emphasizes the mapping and spatial orientation of people, objects, and processes, seeking to understand what Katherine Hart Weiner terms, the “why” of “where” in the humanities by recognizing the reciprocal influences of both geographic and constructed spaces on culture and society.

While it often involves geospatial technologies like Geographic Information Systems (GIS), spatial humanities is not confined to quantitative tools or mapping alone. It also includes:

• Geographic space and architecture
• Spatial science, modeling, and computing
• Spatial literary studies and geocriticism
• Representation of space in media
• Game studies, augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR)

In essense, spatial humanities both utilizes and critiques geospatial technologies and methods, extending their application beyond quantitative uses.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) visually organize information around the concepts of location and place. Data is tied to actual locations on the earth, and geographic features are represented as points, lines, and polygons (vectors) or as continuous gridded surfaces (rasters). There are several different GIS software packages that can be used for geographic analysis, map making, database management, and geospatial statistics. You can use GIS to:

• Study the distribution of populations
• Study physical features of the earth and natural phenomena
• Find the optimal location for an event, service, or business
• Identify geographic patterns and evaluate the distribution of features
• Measure distances and determine optimal routes or paths
• Tie together separate pieces of data to create new information
• Create maps

Check out GIS at Brown for more information

What maps should I look for?

Sanborn Fire Insurance Plans

As known as Sanborn maps, they are highly detailed maps used to assess fire risks and insurance costs for properties. Originally created by the Sanborn Map Company between 1867 and 1970, they provide a wealth of information on urban development and detailed depictions about the towns and cities of the U.S. including detailed descriptions of building names, addresses, building usage, size, and constructed materials.

USGS (US Geological Survey) Topographic Maps

These maps produced by the United States Geological Survey provide highly detailed representations of natural and man-made features like elevation, bodies of water, and roads. USGS topographic maps covers many areas over time capturing valuable historical record of changes in the landscape and a great resource documenting roads, railroads, buildings, and other important landmarks. 

NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Nautical Charts

Nautical charts show important nautical features such a shorelines, navigational harzards, and water depths.  Similar to the USGS Topographic maps depicting roads and landmarks, these maps provide valuable information on navigation and changes to nautical features over time.

Aerial imagery

Aerial photographs provide a bird's eye view of the Earth's landscapes, natural and man-made features and infrastructure that are useful for detailed analysis and mapping. Aerial imagery are highly useful as base maps for georeferencing, tracing urban planning and development over time, and applications in archaeology, surveying, and surveillence research.

Where can I find maps?

At Brown, the John Carter Brown Library archives high-resolutions images of early American map collection available through Luna.

Library of Congress provides free access to scans of thousands of historical Sanborn Fire Insurance Plans for many cities and towns in the United States. The scans can be downloaded as high-resolution TIFFs for georeferencing in ArcGIS Pro or QGIS. 

Rumsey Historical Map Collection archives scans of 16th through 21st Century maps of North American, South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, Antarctica, the Pacific, and the Arctic. There are over 127,000 historical maps in this collection. 

American Geographical Society Library has collections consisting of nearly 2 millions maps, atlases, globes, monographs, serials, photographs, and digital geospatial data. 

Old Maps Online is a free interactive mapping tool that allows you to locate and download historical maps within any area that the interactive map is currently zoomed to.

USGS TopoView provides downloadable USGS topographic maps, both current and historical. Users can locate topographic maps by map extent or keyword and filter by map year and scale.