2. Myself
Jacob R Wang // @jacob_wang
IT-coordinator @ Historisk Atlas
Cand.it – design, communication & media
Head of IT-development @ Odense City Museums
First I wanna thank the people behind this awsome conference.
It’s a massive task to set up such a packed and exiting programme!
And thanks for the opportunity to show some of the stuff that I spend a lot of my time working on.
So, I’m gonna start off with an off topic image that really has no particular relation to this talk.
It’s cool and if my kids ever asks to get one – I’m gonna buy it!
My name is Jacob and I work at the Odense City Museums.
I’m here to tell you about Historisk Atlas - a website where archives, libraries and museums across the Region of Southern Denmark presents local history based on maps.
It started off 5 years ago at Odense City Museums where it’s still curently developed and hosted.
The outline of this talk falls into 2 parts.
The first half is a presentation of the site and its features.
The second half is about current challenges and the future for Historisk Atlas and a brief note on the practicalities of having a digital presence.
Historisk Atlas offers basically 3 things, the first one being maps.
Historisk Atlas presents 25 maps, from modern airial fotos to renaissance stuff in the upper left corner.
All maps are zoomable and fluidly controlled – and of course georeferenced – aligned...
On top of the maps, we have tools. Here you see the Warp-tool, making it real easy to compare and play with the maps.
Exploring maps is what the users spend most time doing during visits.
It’s the National Museum top right.
So we’ve got maps and map tools – and then there’s content in the form of locations.
Each with an individual miniwebpage with relevant tags, images, video, articles and references.
Locations are shared among collaborators and marked with Creative Commons for copyright.
You can do a lot of stuff with locations. Browser them, print them and so forth.
But you can also make routes comprised of chosen locations that get exported to Google Maps.
And obvious feature for the upcoming mobile development.
We want all collaborators on Historisk Atlas to consider the site their own – and to use the site for narrow, local puposes.
Thats why we’ve created the possibility to embed minimaps of Historisk Atlas into other websites
The embedded map is interactive and links to the main site.
Here’s a list of who we are.
In january we were 25 archives, libraries and museums – right now, we’re are 94 institutions collaborating.
Historisk Atlas welcome all archives, libraries and museums in Denmark to participate.
User statistics…
We get a little less than 10.000 visits a month, primarily based on Google searches.
New users find us because of content and we spend nothing on Google Adwords.
The peak at the left was the launch of the current version of Historisk Atlas.
What I like about this image is it’s ability to show the 2 key effects of being met with challenges.
That guys on top – he’s in sheer panic!
The guy below is calm and focused. He really believe he’s in control and he has a plan.
My favorite challenge right now has to do with mobile.
Today we don’t get many droid or iphone visits but the projections are clear.
In 2014 it’s gonna be 50/50, desktop vs mobile.
This shift in internet practise among our users open up room for new ideas and further development.
This is what we’re dealing with.
3 devices instead of 1.
3 fundamentally different use scenarios.
We will need creative versions of Historisk Atlas for couchpotatoes with tablets and people on the move with smartphones alike.
Here’s our idea so far:
Desktop for learning scenarios and content contribution. A multitasking evironment.
Tablets for exploring and gaming.
Mobile is for intelligent mobility scenarios
So, do Historisk Atlas have a digital presence?
Not “enough”. Digital presence is a continuum, not a dualism.
Basically it’s comprised of two things:
1) Being readily available to the user
It’s mostly a matter of technology and device issues – pratical stuff.
Its about hardware and software:
desktops, tablets, smartphones, apps, browsers, webstandards and operating systems
Secondly digital presence is about tapping into where people already go when online.
It’s a matter of web platforms, internet services, social spaces and knowledge arenas online.
It’s about content. And making content present in various spaces online.
The keyword is open data.
Thank you for listening!
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