Digital_Humanities, Critical Reaction #4: The Power of Maps

I'm probably part of a very small group of historians who really don't care for maps. 

I know, I am a disgrace to the field. I understand their importance and know that they can be a vital tool, especially in spatial history, or any history for that matter. They can be interesting to look at, especially as an artifact, but I don't seem to have the same love of it as some of my other colleagues. It's not that I don't like maps, I just am not overly fond of them and do not have the mindset in place to do any real or successful analysis with them.

Take this extreme apathy and add that to a task that requires to make maps, which has primarily filled the time of my Digital Humanities course over the past two weeks. I am dealing with unfamiliar history territory in an foreign digital one. It's a double whammy of difficult. GIS, admittedly, was a lot more difficult to grasp than Google Maps Engine Light, which lays out the features and use fairly nicely (although trying to use javascript in order to embed it onto my webpage was another story). Perhaps, with this easier entry point to digital mapping technology and maps in general, I might find an interest in this field I was never able to find before. Already, I am getting a bit excited about the potential for what kind of maps can be created and the relative ease that they can be put together and presented to the public. 

Of course, in order to create a map, you need an idea and a reason to do so. That is also possibly one aspect that has deterred me from pursuing any extreme interest in maps in history. I've yet to really find a compelling narrative or historical aspect to layout on a map to provide for greater understanding or to point out something that would have otherwise been overlooked. Census data on a map would be the most obvious choice, but I would like to think there is the ability to go a step further than this. This is, in part, why I am especially excited to see what my colleagues produce. I'm sure I will come up with a good map-making idea sometime in the future, but for those who are truly passionate about maps and spatial aspects of history, it'll be intriguing to see how they take these tools and apply them, going beyond what the tutorials we've been looking through provide. 

I'll still keep on pushing through this map section and hope to build up an eventual passion as I progress in my work and research. But, more importantly, I'll be looking to what others produce and excitedly applaud their achievements, techniques, and digital map-making abilities.