Geolocating and Georeferencing: GIS Tools for Ancient Maps Visualisation

The e-Library on Ancient Spanish Cartography has been created inside the frame set by the European Union about the Europe’s digital cultural heritage to give a response to the real demand among citizens and within the research community. With this aim we have applied the most advanced information and communication technologies (ICTs) to make ancient Spanish maps and views accessible through Internet. On a first stage we have built a relational multiformat and multilingual database that included high resolution images of the cartographic documents and that supported the online accessibility structured by levels. This platform has been recently improved by implementing an open GIS based on the data sets of the e-Library. GIS tools have enlarged the usability of the system as the traditional geolocation searches are now completed with the queries based on maps’ georeferencing. The GIS on Ancient Spanish Maps suggests a new concept in digital map libraries.

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