Representing a space-based digital archive on historical maps: A user-centered design approach

Many of the cultural heritage assets stored in archives are related to past events of whom they are primary or indirect document sources. Furthermore, they are concerned not only with the time evolution, but also with the spatial locations. The richness and complexity of these relationship get often lost when archives are organized and digitized. Portals and websites let access information according to a logical and hierarchical structure: a linear sequence of texts and documents. When displayed on a 2D synchronic space or a map – such as Google Map or OpenGIS – representation is often limited to a distribution of pins. A visual approach to this data could offer a more in-depth and engaging way to understand the facts reported in documents. Moreover, if the cultural heritage can be read along a timeline also representing the environmental evolution along history. The paper presents and discusses how to visualize archival data on historical maps to connect both the document sources – photos, paintings, texts, manuscripts, and so on – and the spatial locations. The design approach, which put people at the center of the process of knowledge sharing, is exemplified by a range of benchmarked best practices and a recent case study.