This application is an image and map georeferencing or "geo-rectification" service to warp or stretch historic maps to fit on present day real world map coordinates and annotate them.
Libraries and other institutions have used it, including the New York Public Library, Harvard, Stanford Universities, Leiden Archives (in The Netherlands), The Department of Education and the National Environment Protection Authority (US Federal Government), and Wikimedia Commons. As far as we know Public Record Office Victoria is the only archive in Australia and possibly the southern hemisphere to use MapWarper and offer researchers the ability to view thousands of Victorian historic maps and plans to better understand how urban and rural landscapes have changed or not changed over time.
In June 2019 Public Record Office Victoria launched this application Mapwarper with close to 5000 Parish Plans. You can read more about those records HERE. They have now been ‘rectified’ or geoplaced by PROV staff, volunteers and the public. One year later we added over 6000 historic maps from The Historic Plan Collection of Victoria (Victorian Public Record Series 8168) to the site. These maps date from 1804 until 1984 but are predominantly pre-1950. You can read more about the types of maps that make up this significant collection HERE and more specific information regarding the collection sub categories HERE. These sub categories may help refine your search for specific topographical features. As we add more maps to Map Warper we hope you will create an account and help us rectify these national treasures for easy access by future researchers.
Please refer to the table below for information about PROV Map Warper's data accuracy, completeness, consistency, validity and accessibility.
| Characteristic | How It's Measured |
|---|---|
| Accuracy | Through a peer review process akin to Wikipedia, map ground control points are input by users with a PROV Map Warper account, and are reviewed by Public Record Office Victoria staff and volunteers. The software also automatically indicates the margin of error once rectification is completed. |
| Completeness and consistency | The data provides a complete record of latitude/longitude values as well as contemporary place names for nearly 5000 parish plans and close to 7000 historic plans. The rectified maps are overlayed on Open Street Maps, a crowdsourced non-proprietary alternative to Google Maps.
The data matches both Open Street and Google Maps data. |
| Validity | Data is exportable as non-proprietary CSV and KML. |
| Accessibility | The dataset can currently only be accessed via the PROV Map Warper service though there are plans to release metadata via data.vic.gov.au. The PROV Map Warper also offers an API for the programmatic access to its data. |
Tim Waters
tim@geothings.net
blog: https://thinkwhere.wordpress.com
Twitter: @tim_waters
Many people at PROV including staff, Kate Follington, Tara Oldfield, Daniel Wilksch, Kazuki Tada, Asa Letourneau as well as a passionate Volunteer team, David Asquith, Elizabeth Buckle, Alison Dredge, Kim House, Neil Paddle, Fiona O'Donnell, Anna Wells, Isha Kuhns, Anne Jones and Claudia Guli have made the PROV service possible.