A School Atlas as a History Machine: The Bosatlas Online

Abstract

In principle, a school atlas presents the status quo at a given moment, but when it is regarded as a serial work regularly updated, and when, thanks to digital technologies, the same maps in consecutive atlas editions can be compared one to another, then movement over time is visualized. With a customized tool, one may pick one particular map in the nth edition of the atlas and then compare it to the same map in the previous or the next edition on a shared screen, to find out what changes occurred within a specific time frame. Examples of possible applications at different scales show that each map type (because of the kind of symbols used) and each scale level have their own types of stories unfolding.