omnia mea mecum fero

Robin Good: The David Ramsey Map Collection is an historical collection of thousands of beautiful maps and atlases organized and made freely accessible to the public online in unique and unprecedented ways.

This is a stunning example of a visual curated collection, offering thousands of beautiful images at very high quality, and multiple ways and tools to navigate this ocean of maps.

 

This online collection offers in fact no less than 12 different ways to navigate its contents by providing dedicated browsers and visual imaging tools ranging from 2D-GIS to SecondLife and virtual QTR panoramas. For example, with the Google Earth visualization, any map in the collection can be seen perfectly mapped on the globe, or by using the Luna Browser one can create collections, save and download images, annotate maps or even create embeddable presentations.

All of the images in the collection have been published online at full resolution and are available to download at different quality levels under a Creative Commons License for non-commercial uses.

This is truly a spectacular collection with marvellous maps and atlases enriched by complementary data, visualization tools and a formidable array of navigation devices.

 

Possibly the best online curated collection I have seen so far.

 

Must-see. 10/10

 

About page: http://www.davidrumsey.com/about

 

Collection and Tools to navigate it: http://www.davidrumsey.com/view

 

Home page: http://www.davidrumsey.com/

 

Via Robin Good, Armando, José Moraga Campos, Rui Guimarães Lima

by CORINNEW on APRIL 16, 2012

 

I know a lot of people view curation as a buzz word devoid of meaning, but I like the metaphor!

 

To talk content curation, we really need to think through the duties of a museum curator for a second. A curator scours the art world, selects the finest works, gathers them together around a unified theme, provides a frame to understand the artists’ messages and then hosts a conversation around the collection.

 

That’s not unlike the 21st century teacher who must comb through an overabundance of information to discover the significant and relevant, bundle those ideas into course modules, contextualize them for the class and then create an environment for students to explore those ideas and enter into a conversation about them. Over the last couple of years, I’ve come to think of my role as a teacher as that of a curator of ideas (also see my SXSWedu presentation on the topic). I’ve also come to believe that the steps involved in the curation process are key new media literacies which we should teach our students.

 

That’s why this spring, I introduced a brand-new curation assignment (described on the back of the syllabus) in my social media class.

 

Read more...

 

Via Gust MEES