Introduction & My Process
This week in Hacking the Humanities, we learned how to create web maps with Esri’s ArcGIS online platform, including creating point and polygon layers and manipulating symbology in order to convey a story.
While making my map, I first imported my data in CSV from a spreadsheet. This created a layer with points representing all of the buildings on campus that I frequently visit. One key decision I made after this was to change the symbology style, scaling the size of the points to correspond to the number of times a week that I visit the building. This allows the quick visual identification of my most frequented buildings – Burton and James Hall. From here, I created another layer, using the polygon tool to create shapes outlining the buildings to further enhance the visual aspect of my map.
Web mapping has lots of potential for DH work in general. It allows digital humanists to associate fixed points in space with more abstract data, which can create powerful visual representations. In the field of the humanities, it is very common for data to be associated with points in space, and tools such as ArcGIS allow for the visualization of this data. Data is more than just numbers – when associated with points on a map, it can be harnessed to tell a detailed story, such as the story told by my map that I have created below.
ArcGIS in particular, as the industry leading GIS software, allows for the creation of powerful visualizations. The ability to upload layer data from a CSV file is a powerful feature that allows the mass import of data, speeding up the creation process of maps. Furthermore, ArcGIS has powerful organizational capabilities, allowing content to be shared among groups and users. This is important for digital humanists, who rely upon collaboration together.
My Map
2 thoughts on “Mapping Carleton: My Experience with ArcGIS”
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Hi Warren,
You did a great job on your map! I think your choice in having different sized orange circles were nice because it informs a viewer how often you frequented a place and the orange grabs the viewer’s attention too. I agree with you when your talk about how mapping in Digital Humanities are great visual representations and how the points on a map tell a story. When thinking about ArcGIS, I resonate with your thoughts on it being very efficient and a nice way to collaborate with others.
Hi Warren, I like your map; it looks very clean and sleek. Scaling points by visit frequency was a great touch, and it highlights how personal patterns can be made legible through mapping. I also like your point about web mapping turning abstract data into a narrative. It made me think about how even simple datasets can gain new meaning when placed in visual contexts. Your reflection on ArcGIS’s collaborative features also raises interesting possibilities for group projects in the humanities.