National Library of Scotland: Georeferencer

Published Nov 25, 2010 Updated Nov 08, 2013

Various historical maps from the collection of National Library of Scotland were digitized thanks to our tool Georeferencer. You can find more information about this project as well as a step by step guide at: http://maps.nls.uk/projects/georeferencer/

The first public release, which included 1,000 early maps of Scotland, was in November 2010. In November 2010, this was the first public release and included 1,000 early maps of Scotland. A wide variety of maps was included — maps of the whole of Scotland, county maps, town plans, coastal charts, and estate mapping, dating between 1580 and the 1920s. About half of the maps were georeferenced in the first 16 months, with some categories of maps, such as town plans, completely georeferenced during that time (http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november12/fleet/11fleet.html).

** Why to georeference maps?

It allows you to compare historic maps directly with present day satellite images and dynamically change the transparency. At the same time, it is very easy to share, use and georeference the maps in more detail and view the maps alongside other georeferenced historical maps of the same area. Last but not least it helps to improve search methods to find maps in the future (with an intuitive system such as the MapRank Search).