David Rumsey Historical Map Collection

The David Rumsey Collection was started nearly 20 years ago, and focuses primarily on cartography of the Americas from the 18th and 19th centuries, but also has maps of the World, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. The collection includes atlases, globes, school geographies, books, maritime charts, and a variety of separate maps, including pocket, wall, children's and manuscript.

Digitization of the project began in 1997. The project was undertaken for numerous reasons: Maps are uniquely suitable to high-resolution scanning because they contain large amounts of detailed information, which can be seen more readily when the viewer is able to zoom in and enlarge images on a computer screen. Viewed over the Internet, rare maps become available to those who previously had no access to such collections or were not aware of the maps' existence. In their original form, maps and atlases can be large, delicate, and unwieldy. Digitization increases their accessibility, and combined with an online catalog allows the viewer a variety of ways to search the collection.

Presenting individual maps in a digital format literally breaks the boundaries of an atlas's bookbinding, allowing the viewer to view single maps independent of their original encasing. With Luna Imaging's Insight® software, the maps are experienced in a revolutionary way. Multiple maps from different time periods can be viewed side-by-side. Or, the end user can create their own collection of maps by saving groups of images that hold particular interest. Complete cataloging data accompanies every image, allowing for in-depth searches of the collection.

Materials that were created in America and that illustrate the evolution of the country's history, culture, and population distinguish the collection. Close inspection of the maps often reveals the rise and fall of towns, mining excavations, the unfolding of the railroads, and the "discovery" of the American West by European explorers. The collection also includes European imprints containing maps of the Americas that were influential to American cartographers, as well as maps of other parts of the world distinguished by great craftsmanship, significance and beauty.

A more detailed description of the evolution of the physical collection into the online collection can be found in "State of the Art," an article that originally appeared in Mercators World Magazine.

The collection on the Internet brings together the finest optical equipment and digital scanners, cutting edge viewing technology, the latest image processing software, powerful wavelet compression, and reliable long-term storage of digital images. The digitized maps are very high resolution images scanned at at least 300 pixels per inch, as measured against the original map's dimensions. The larger maps generate files frequently approaching two gigabytes in size; the average file size of images in the collection is 200 megabytes.

The following hardware and software is used in the process of creating and distributing the images over the Internet:

* Insight® client/server and browser software by Luna Imaging, Inc.
* PhaseOne Powerphase 4x5 digital scanning camera back (150 megabyte capture)
* PhaseOne PowerphaseFX 4x5 digital scanning camera back (380 megabyte capture)
* PhaseOne image-capture software
* Sinar X 4x5 view camera
* Rodenstock lenses
* Kaiser RePro copy stand with Videssence Icelites
* Adobe PhotoShop 7.0
* MrSid image compression software by LizardTech
* Maplicity and MapImager GIS software from Telemorphic
* ArcIms GIS server software from ESRI

Computer network:
* Apple G4 Dual 1 GHz, 1.5 gigabytes RAM
* Apple G4 450 MHz, 1.5 gigabytes RAM
* Apple G3 400 MHz, 1 gigabyte RAM
* Windows NT Dual Pentium 550 MHz Xeon, 1 gigabyte RAM Storage:
* DVD Ram 5.2 gigabyte storage discs

Cartography Associates, founded in 1996, promotes the distribution of digital facsimiles both in print and electronic media. Specializing in both primary source documents and cutting-edge technology, Cartography Associates is committed to developing tools that integrate cataloging with visual images on the Internet. CA's vision is to offer users the best of both worlds: the powerful searching, access, and user functionality made possible by technology, combined with the visual beauty, technical mastery and intellectual richness of original source materials.