Ran across a genealogy/Google Maps mashup today. That got me thinking about maps. The key about maps as far as genealogy goes is that things change over time. Boundaries move back and forth — just look at Alsace-Lorraine! — and using a modern map isn’t always helpful because of it. Not to mention the varying levels of detail you’d want, and other sorts of non-political boundaries (diocese boundaries, for example). Aye, it’s one heck of a problem. I don’t think the data itself is necessarily a problem, nor storing it — the problem is that the data isn’t freely available. Google Maps is doing a good job but it’s all present-day (which is fine for its main use, of course).

I’ve thought about user-contributed map data, but no matter what angle I look at it from, it seems like a bad idea. It’s the sort of thing that should be left to cartographic experts.

In an ideal world, all the data would be available for free, and you’d be able to pull in just the part you want — say County Down in Ireland in 1810, for example. (Meaning, the individual counties and parishes and such would be discrete entities able to be separated from the rest. It seems like much of the free boundary data out there just describes the boundary lines themselves. But I could be wrong.)

Ah, if only this were an ideal world…

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