Oldinsurancemaps.net is now a Charter Project

OSM US is incredibly excited to denote the latest Charter Project: OldInsuranceMaps.net (OIM)!

If you’re a representation nerd you’ll retrieve ever seeing a Sanborn Insurance Map successful person. They often travel successful perfectly monolithic tomes that were erstwhile possibly the closest you could get to OpenStreetMap earlier the integer age; complete the years, each page becomes a collage of mini cutouts of insubstantial pasted complete streets since renamed, aliases buildings since demolished. They are some beautiful pieces of artwork and 1 of the astir meticulous references for geographic information successful the United States from 1867 into the 1960s. Sanborn Maps are a valuable assets for humanities mappers and researchers (as concisely mentioned successful our OpenHistoricalMap Mapper Highlight post), and acknowledgment to OIM their georeferenced accusation is overmuch much accessible.

A Sanborn representation of Richmond, Virginia astatine the Library of Congress. Notice wherever insubstantial cutouts person been layered complete the original map.

Adam Cox began OIM while astatine Louisiana State University backmost successful 2022 and coming the level hosts complete 1200 Sanborn maps chiefly originated from the Library of Congress. These maps person specified wide entreaty that a wide scope of group person been drawn to the project, from hobbyists exploring the history of their hometown to scholars undertaking ample investigation studies and professionals moving connected redevelopment. It is very apt that a spot that you attraction astir tin beryllium explored via OIM, and location is simply a beardown organization of unpaid georeferencers to link pinch (in lawsuit you request different mapping rabbit spread to autumn down).

Anyone tin petition that their metropolis aliases town’s Sanborn map(s) beryllium added to the website. Scanned maps tin past beryllium georeferenced by placing crushed power points and digitally stitching each page together. Thanks to Adam’s work, the interface is intuitive to study and accessible nary matter your existing knowledge of surface science and GIS. It’s an innovative operation of humanities archivism, open-sourced technology, and crowdsourced knowledge.

Sanborn maps astatine the New Orleans Public Library, CIty Archives and Special Collections

Our task exists to facilitate the creation of unfastened humanities representation materials, and to do truthful successful a measurement that is accessible, engaging, and robust. Becoming portion of the Charter Project programme is the cleanable measurement to bring this activity to the adjacent level, because the ethos of the OSM US statement (and each the awesome group wrong it!) resonates truthful powerfully pinch what our level is each about.

OIM joins YouthMappers, Yesterdays, and OpenHistoricalMap arsenic an OSM US Charter Project. In particular, the OSM US squad is excited to spot accrued collaboration and synergies betwixt OHM, Yesterdays, and OIM. Each instrumentality is individually fantabulous astatine collecting and portraying historical geographic data, and galore contributors to 1 level people see different successful their workflows. For example, mappers contributing to OHM already create georeferenced mosaics connected OldInsuranceMaps.net and usage them straight while editing OHM arsenic humanities reference layers to trace from, and Yesterdays includes Sanborn maps from OIM arsenic a guidelines furniture to thief users spot humanities images accurately.

University of Richmond student pinch a integer show built pinch the thief of OldInsuranceMaps.net

Get Involved pinch OIM

• Georeference immoderate maps and research the site! Get started astatine oldinsurancemaps.net

• Donate to the task done OSM US

• Join the #oldinsurancemaps transmission connected the OSM US Slack

• Contribute to the task connected GitHub

Any task successful the OpenStreetMap ecosystem is invited to use to go a Charter Project; applications are ever unfastened and reviewed connected a rolling basis. Visit the Community & Charter Projects page to study more.