Harvard Map Collection launches new Web site

By Susan Peterson

Gazette Staff

When Nancy Cline began looking for a place to live after accepting her job at Harvard, she didn't have to search very far. The new Harvard College Librarian, who would be moving from Pennsylvania in August, knew about the Harvard Map Collection's budding online database of Massachusetts cities and communities.

The online map system was not yet up and running, but David Cobb, head of the Harvard Map Collection, was able to help Cline out.

"David put together a package of geographic data about the real estate, tax rates, roads, shopping centers, and schools that was very helpful," Cline said. "It confirmed that I was coming to one of the best research libraries, and it highlighted how useful this information can be."

For Cline, who is the Roy E. Larsen Librarian of Harvard College, and others who wish to find specific geographic data about the Commonwealth, the new Massachusetts Electronic Atlas is now available online. The state's 351 communities can be explored, researched -- and downloaded -- by entering the address: http://icg.harvard.edu/~maps/maatlas.htm

The electronic "atlas" is the only detailed atlas available for Massachusetts, in print or online. It is not the country's first digital state atlas, but it stands apart because it is interactive.

"With ours, you can slice and dice the state by sections, pan and zoom in on the town you want, and get the data behind the map and download it," Cobb said. "Most other atlases on the Web don't provide you with data at all."

Not a Paper Museum

The new technology of putting statistics together with geography is called Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and is becoming a necessary tool for map libraries. The ability to pull the information into a user-friendly database became Cobb's challenge.

"We could accept that challenge or sort of become a paper museum," Cobb explained, "and that's not what we wanted to be. We wanted to be participants."

Cobb, along with Douglas Carnahan, director of the Metropolitan Data Center at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC), and Richard Gelpke, a professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, have been planning the database for more than two years.

"It's really been a true partnership that has involved going outside and working with a lot of different people," Cobb said. "It's been a huge, collective effort with our staff and students for data input and proofreading."

That teamwork created speed. It took only a little more than six months to enter the data and get the system online and working -- all with no budget and on top of the other responsibilities Cobb and his colleagues have at the Map Collection in Pusey Library.

Cobb sees the project as a way to help meet the needs of students who use the map collection for their research, as well as a means of dealing with the statistics coming to the collection from federal, state, and local governments and other sources.

"It all started when we tried to answer our students' and faculty research needs," Cobb said. "Our students were challenging us. They had digital information they would bring from California, Mexico, or India, but they didn't have geography and so they came to us. But often we didn't have the digital geography to match their data. Then the 1990 U.S. census and its geographic boundary files came out in digital format."

From there, Cobb and Arlene Olivero, a geographic information systems specialist in the Map Collection library, began to research and develop partnerships with state and local agencies, finding information beyond what was available in the 1990 census.

"At one point, we thought we'd publish an atlas," Cobb explained. "But it soon became apparent that our information wasn't static. We were constantly finding new data and updating."

One of those data sources outside of the census is the Massachusetts Area Planning Council. Years earlier, Cobb had met Gelpke, a council member, who introduced him to Carnahan of the Metropolitan Data Center. The three have mutual interests in maps, each bringing a different expertise to the data gathering and design of the site.

"The three of us made a good fit, with different perspectives," said Gelpke, who teaches cartography and helped to gather some of the non-census data that was, he said, "difficult to scratch for."

With the help of the software manufacturer, Environmental Systems Research Institute, new software was developed that would accommodate the interactive nature of the online plan.

A Library Without Walls

Though the new online atlas features just 171 maps out of more than 400,000 in the Harvard Map Collection, it is a comprehensive study of Massachusetts geography and its statistical base.

"We don't see this atlas as our collection, but rather an extension of it," Cobb said. "The collection of the future is on the computer, and we see this as a means of bringing people to our collection. It's an extension of our services and what information technology allows us to do."

At the moment, the available data is listed only by towns, not the sections within towns. As more data becomes available, different boroughs within towns and cities will be seen in detail.

The online atlas features data about a certain city or town's school system, ethnic profiles, income, health data, employment, real estate, lodging and transportation, among others. The online mapping system also has its own reference system, with the data's sources listed.

"One thing we don't do very well is to create information -- but we provide good access to that data," Cobb said.

"It can be very useful," he continued. "People are using data on ethnicity in terms of births to begin to predict changes in the school systems to plan for future needs, such as languages that may need to be taught."

New residents like Cline, tourists, businesses, city and environmental planners, and government officials can also find the information helpful.

"We hope city and town officials will use it," Carnahan said. "The information online can also help anticipate new needs, such as for hospitals and elder care systems. Public and academic libraries and chambers of commerce are also likely to be big users."

As an extension to the Map Collection in the library, the project is expected to grow and expand as new information becomes available.

"The library represents a neutral site for projects like this," Cobb explained. "We like to think that we're providing a nice democratic environment for information. It's one of those projects we decided to take on and carve out some time for, because we could see very easily why it fit into our mission of providing geographic information. It's a way for people to use this kind of data beyond our walls."