Edward's Tool Review
Project Map at https://www.collegecityfractal.org/mt-zion-restoration
A variety of geospatial tools now exist that are designed for the digital humanities, and many have particular traits that make them valuable for certain purposes. Yet, sometimes it can be hard to pare down the list to a more manageable size. With a project-based approach, I set out to find a DH tool that would succeed in the mission I would task it with, despite the corresponding limitations.
The cemetery that I am researching and restoring, Mt. Zion Cemetery in Walnut Ridge, Arkansas, was without a plot map, and I needed some way to create a new one that was easy, free, and able to be incorporated into a website that the public could visit. Other considerations were paramount too: I needed high-quality satellite that would allow me to pinpoint gravestone locations, and I also wanted a DH tool that was open-source and relatively stable for the long-term viability of this project.
With this wishlist in mind, I went through a list of potential options. Perhaps the most powerful and best-known geographic information system (GIS) is ArcGIS, supported by the company Esri. While it appears that the tool offered top-rate satellite imagery and a host of different commands and visualizations, its more comprehensive nature meant that it would take more time to learn how to use effectively. That was a tradeoff I was willing to make, but the dealbreaker was the $100 a year price tag for an individual subscription. For my small-scale, one-time use, this was a large sum and even more pricey considering I would have to continue paying that in perpetuity to keep the map on the web.
A free open-source competitor, QGIS, is one that I will definitely have to look at further. QGIS has many of the same features as ArcGIS and some reviewers even rate it higher that the latter, citing its robust network of developers. It features a growing number of plugins and will only get more formidable over time. However, the major drawback was that the default satellite view, the same one shared by Bing Maps, had a more poor-quality view of Mt. Zion Cemetery itself at maximum magnification. Since I did not have a specialized GPS coordinate tracker, and since phone GPS can be hit-or-miss in detecting difference of a few feet, this was a deal-breaker. A lack of satellite imagery also removed OpenStreetMap as a candidate for this project too. Other tools such as StoryMapJS and Animaps looked promising (and I might use StoryMapJS in another setting), but neither easily allows for plotting 300+ points in a tight space.
After considering all these options, I decided to use Google MyMaps as my tool. Despite being a closed-source tool, it is (at present) nonetheless free. As a bonus, the Google Maps interface is fairly intuitive for most web users, allowing them to focus on the data itself. The user base is vast, and consequently a large number of tutorials and help pages are available. The newest release was distributed in 2014, while the original version of the tool only dates to 2007. If recent trends continue, it shows promise of still being stable and accessible for decades to come.
MyMaps takes the regular Google Maps experience to the next level, allowing custom maps to be generated with almost limitless points and custom point markers. The coordinates of points can be exported in a KMZ file, which can be eventually transferred into an Excel spreadsheet. A number of APIs allow for further customization for those who can code, allowing users to do everything from adjusting the color of the imagery to adding a map legend. Yet in the main software version, without API additions, there are some big limitations too. Multiple data points for the same coordinates are a challenge, only resolved by spreading the points in a line across the map. The satellite view doesn’t toggle between years like the street view does, meaning that there is no choice between summer and winter imagery. Thus, plotting grave markers that are under trees or in shadows was a bit of a challenge, and I had to take a printout of the map to the cemetery and plot those markers by sight. Data points do not alphabetize automatically, and manually dragging and dropping 300 points into order is unnecessarily tedious work. As always, satellite image resolution at higher zoom levels could be improved as well.
Overall, I would highly recommend Google MyMaps to anyone needing to plot geographic coordinates for visible landmarks on a map for the first time, and for other related uses. While more complex tasks would require more sophisticated programs such as QGIS, MyMaps is a good place to start.
