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Using the Map View

When your items mention real-world places, the Archiver resolves those places to latitude/longitude coordinates and stores them on the item. Anything resolved that way can be plotted on a map.

Where the map is​

On the Search page. Run a search; if any of the results on the current page carry resolved coordinates, a Show map button appears beside the sort dropdown. Click it to open the map above the results, and Hide map to close it again.

The map shows the results you are looking at, so narrowing the search — or paging — changes what is plotted.

What you see​

Each pin is one resolved place. Items that resolve to the same point share a pin.

Click a pin for a popup with the place name and a list of the items at it; each item in the list opens in its accession.

The base map is a muted greyscale layer. Scroll-wheel zoom is off, so scrolling the page past the map doesn't zoom it.

Filtering​

The map plots whatever the current search found, so the filter panel is the way to change it. Restricting by fond, category or date range changes which pins appear.

A few patterns that work well:

  • Photo collection trace — filter to category Photograph, the map shows where photos were taken
  • Estate boundaries — filter to a single accession, the map shows everywhere the estate's records reference

What's not on the map​

  • Places that didn't resolve. Very small hamlets, historical place names that no longer exist, or place names with ambiguous parents.
  • Items where the place wasn't extracted. If nothing pulled out a place name, there's nothing to plot.
  • Items pinned to a region rather than a point. "Derbyshire" gets a single point, not a boundary.

Quality and corrections​

Place resolution is not perfect. Common issues:

  • Wrong place picked from several candidates — "Springfield" without a county will resolve to one of dozens. The most likely reading given the rest of the document is chosen, and it can be wrong.
  • Modern coordinates for a historical site — Constantinople resolves to modern Istanbul. Useful for orientation; not strictly historically correct.
  • Uneven coverage — densely documented parts of the world resolve more reliably than sparsely documented ones.

To correct a place, open the item and edit its place fields in the accession.