The UC Berkeley Library has started a trial of Piatidnevka Digital Archive. The trial will end on December 5, 2024. Please provide your feedback to your Librarian for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies at Lpendse at berkeley dot edu
The Piatidnevka Digital Archive is a valuable resource for researchers studying early Soviet history, particularly between 1929 and 1931. Published six times a month, this journal documents the Soviet Union’s brief experiment with a five-day workweek. The archive provides insight into the Soviet goal of replacing traditional societal norms with innovative approaches. It contains a wealth of visual and textual materials, including photographs, articles, editorials, and commentaries that offer firsthand perspectives on this significant period.
Some of you know that I’m rather delighted by maps. I find them fascinating for many reasons, from their visual beauty to their use of the lie to impart truth, to some of their colors and onward. I think that maps are wonderful and great and superbulous even as I unhappily acknowledge that some are dastardly examples of horror.
What I’m writing about today is the process of taking a historical map (yay!) and pinning it on a contemporary street map in order to use it as a layer in programs like StoryMaps JS or ArcGIS, etc. To do that, I’m going to write about
Picking a Map from Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia accounts and “map” markup
Warping the map image
Loading the warped map into ArcGIS Online as a layer
But! Before I get into my actual points for the day, I’m going to share one of my very favorite maps:
Urbano Monte, Composite: Tavola 1-60. [Map of the World], World map, 40x51cm (Milan, Italy, 1587), David Rumsey Map Collection, http://www.davidrumsey.com.Just look at this beauty! It’s an azimuthal projection, centered on the North Pole (more on Wikipedia), from a 16th century Italian cartographer. For a little bit about map projections and what they mean, take a look at NASA’s example Map Projections Morph. Or, take a look at the above map in a short video from David Rumsey to watch it spin, as it was designed to.
What is Map Warping
While this is in fact one of my favorite maps and l use many an excuse to talk about it, I did actually bring it up for a reason: the projection (i.e., azimuthal) is almost impossible to warp.
As stated, warping a map is when one takes a historical map and pins it across a standard, contemporary “accurate” street map following a Mercator projection, usually for the purpose of analysis or use in a GIS program, etc.
Here, for example, is the 1913 Sanborn fire insurance map layered in ArcGIS Online maps.
Screen capture of ArcGIS with rectified Sanborn map.
I’ll be writing about how I did that below. For the moment, note how the Sanborn map is a bit pinched at the bottom and the borders are tilted. The original map wasn’t aligned precisely North and the process of pinning it (warping it) against an “accurate” street map resulted in the tilting.
That was possible in part because the Sanborn map, for all that they’re quite small and specific, was oriented along a Mercator projection, permitting a rather direct rectification (i.e., warping).
In contrast, take a look at what happens in most GIS programs if one rectifies a map—including my favorite above—which doesn’t follow a Mercator projection:
Warped version of the Monte map against a Mercator projection in David Rumsey’s Old Maps Online connection in 2024. You can play with it in Old Maps Online.
Warping a Mercator Map
This still leaves the question: How can one warp a map to begin with?
There are several programs that you can use to “rectify” a map. Among others, many people use QGIS (open access; Windows, macOS, Linux) or ArcGIS Pro (proprietary;Windows only).
Here, I’m going to use Wikimaps Warper (for more info), which connects up with Wikimedia Commons. I haven’t seen much documentation on the agreements and I don’t know what kind of server space the Wikimedia groups are working with, but recently Wikimedia Commons made some kind of agreement with Map Warper (open access, link here) and the resulting Wikimaps Warper is (as of the writing of this post in November 2024) in beta.
I personally think that the resulting access is one of the easiest to currently use.
And on to our steps!
Picking a Map from Wikimedia Commons
To warp a map, one has to have a map. At the moment, I recommend heading over to Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/) and selecting something relevant to your work.
Because I’m planning a multi-layered project with my 1950s publisher data, I searched for (san francisco 1950 map) in the search box. Wikimedia returned dozens of Sanborn Insurance Maps. At some point (22 December 2023) a previous user (Nowakki) had uploaded the San Francisco Sanborn maps from high resolution digital surrogates from the Library of Congress.
Looking through the relevant maps, I picked Plate 0000a (link) because it captured several areas of the city and not just a single block.
When looking at material on Wikimedia, it’s a good idea to verify your source. Most of us can upload material into Wikimedia Commons and the information provided on Wikimedia is not always precisely accurate. To verify that I’m working with something legitimately useful, I looked through the metadata and checked the original source (LOC). Here, for example, the Wikimedia map claims to be from 1950 and in the LOC, the original folder says its from 1913.
Feeling good about the legality of using the Sanborn map, I was annoyed about the date. Nonetheless, I decided to go for it.
Moving forward, I checked the quality. Because of how georecification and mapping software works, I wanted as high a quality of map as I could get so that it wouldn’t blur if I zoomed in.
If there wasn’t a relevant map in Wikimedia Commons already, I could upload a map myself (and likely will later). I’ll likely talk about uploading images into Wikimedia Commons in … a couple months maybe? I have so many plans! I find process and looking at steps for getting things done so fascinating.
Wikimedia Accounts and Tags
Signup form for the Wikimedia suite, including Wikimedia Commons and Wikimaps.
Before I can do much with my Sanborn map, I need to log in to Wikimedia Commons as a Wiki user. One can set up an account attached to one of one’s email accounts at no charge. I personally use my work email address.
Note: Wikimedia intentionally does not ask for much information about you and states that they are committed to user privacy. Their info pages (link) states that they will not share their users’ information.
I already had an account, so I logged straight in as “AccidentlyDigital” … because somehow I came up with that name when I created my account.
Once logged in, a few new options will appear on most image or text pages, offering me the opportunity to add or edit material.
Once I picked the Sanborn map, I checked
Was the map already rectified?
Was it tagged as a map?
If the specific map instance has already been rectified in Wikimaps, then there should be some information toward the end of the summary box that has a note about “Geotemporal data” and a linked blue bar at the bottom to “[v]iew the georeferenced map in the Wikimaps Warper.”
Screen capture of “Summary” box with geocordinates from 2024.
If that doesn’t exist, then one might get a summary box that is limited to a description, links, dates, etc., and no reference to georeferencing.
In consequence, I needed to click the “edit” link next to “Summary” above the description. Wikimedia will then load the edit box for only the summary section, which will appear with all the text from the public-facing box surrounded by standard wiki-language markup.
Screen capture of Wikimedia Commons box with limited information for an image.
All I needed to do was change the “{{Information” to “{{Map” and then hit the “Publish” button toward the bottom of the edit box to release my changes.
Screen capture of Wikimedia Commons edit screen for the summary.
The updated, public-facing view will now have a blue button offering to let users “Georeference the map in Wikimaps Warper.”
Once the button appeared, I clicked that lovely, large, blue button and went off to have some excellent fun (my version thereof).
Example of Wikimedia Commons Summary box prior to georeferencing.
Warping the map
When I clicked the “Georefence” button, Wikimedia sent me away to Wikimaps Warper (https://warper.wmflabs.org/). The Wikimaps interface showed me a thumbnail of my chosen map and offered to let me “add this map.”
I, delighted beyond measure, clicked the button and then went and got some tea. Depending on how many users are in the Wikimaps servers and how big the image file for the map is, adding the file into the Wikimaps servers can take between seconds and minutes. I have little patience for uploads and almost always want more tea, so the upload time is a great tea break.
Once the map loaded (I can get back to the file through Wikimedia Commons if I leave), I got an image of my chosen map with a series of options as tabs above the map.
Most of the tabs attempt to offer options for precisely what they say. The “Show” tab offers an image of the loaded map.
2024 screen capture showing navigation tabs.
Edit allows me to edit the metadata (i.e., title, cartographer, etc.) associated with the map.
Rectify allows me to pin the map against a contemporary street map.
Crop allows me to clip off edges and borders of the map that I might not want to appear in my work.
Preview allows me to see where I’m at with the rectification process.
Export provides download options and HTML links for exporting the rectified map into other programs.
Trace would take me to another program with tracing options. I usually ignore the tab, but there are times when it’s wonderful.
The Sanborn map didn’t have any information I felt inclined to crop, so I clicked straight onto the “Rectify” tab and got to work.
As noted above, the process of rectification involves matching the historic map against a contemporary map. To start, one needs at least four pins matching locations on each map. Personally, I like to start with some major landmarks. For example, I started by finding Union Square and putting pins on the same location in both maps. Once I was happy with my pins’ placement on both maps, I clicked the “add control point” button below the two maps.
Initial pins set in the historic map on the left and the OpenStreetMap on the right. note the navigation tools in the upper right corner of each panel.
Once I had four pins, I clicked the gray “warp image!” button. The four points were hardly enough and my map curled badly around my points.
To straighten out the map, I went back in and pinned the four corners of the map against the contemporary map. I also pinned several street corners because I wanted the rectified map to be as precisely aligned as possible.
All said, I ended up with more than 40 pins (i.e., control points). As I went, I warped the image every few pins in order to save it and see where the image needed alignment.
Screen capture of Wikimaps with example of pins for warping.
As I added control points and warped my map, the pins shifted colors between greens, yellows, and reds with the occasional blue. The colors each demonstrated where the two maps were in exact alignment and where they were being pinched and, well, warped, to match.
Loading the warped map into ArcGIS Online as a layer
Once I was happy with the Sanborn image rectified against the OpenStreetMap that Wikimaps draws in, I was ready to export my work.
In this instance, I eventfully want to have two historic maps for layers and two sets of publisher data (1910s and 1950s).
To work with multiple layers, I needed to move away from Google My Maps and toward a more complex GIS program. Because UC Berkeley has a subscription to ArcGIS Online, I headed there. If I hadn’t had access to that online program, I’d have gone to QGIS. For an access point to ArcGIS online or for more on tools and access points, head to the UC Berkeley Library Research Guide for GIS (https://guides.lib.berkeley.edu/gis/tools).
I’d already set up my ArcGIS Online (AGOL) account, so I jumped straight in at https://cal.maps.arcgis.com/ and then clicked on the “Map” button in the upper-left navigation bar.
2024 Screen capture of ArcGIS Online Navigation Bar from login screen2024 add layer list in ArcGIS Online
On the Map screen, ArcGIS defaulted to a map of the United States in a Mercator projection. ArcGIS also had the “Layers” options opened in the left-hand tool bars.
Because I didn’t yet have any layers except for my basemap, ArcGIS’s only option in “Layers” was “Add.”
Clicking on the down arrow to the right of “Add,” I selected “Add layer from URL.”
In response, ArcGIS Online gave me a popup box with a space for a URL.
Flipping back to ArcGIS Online, I pasted the tile link into the URL text box and made sure that the auto-populating “Type” information about the layer was accurate. I then hit a series of next to assure ArcGIS Online that I really did want to use this map.
Warning: Because I used a link, the resulting layer is drawn from Wikimaps every time I load my ArcGIS project. That does mean that if I had a poor internet connection, the map might take a hot minute to load or fail entirely. On UC Berkeley campus, that likely won’t be too much of an issue. Elsewhere, it might be.
Once my image layer loaded, I made sure I was aligned with San Francisco, and I saved my map with a relevant title. Good practice means that I also include a map description with the citation information to the Sanborn map layer so that viewers will know where my information is coming from.
2024 Screen capture of ArcGIS maps edit screen with rectified Sanborn map.
Once I’ve saved it, I can mess with share settings and begin offering colleagues and other publics the opportunity to see the lovely, rectified Sanborn map. I can also move toward adding additional layers.
Next Time
Next post, I plan to write about how I’m going to add my lovely 1955 publisher dataset on top of a totally different, 1950 San Francisco map as a new layer. Yay!
The Sister Makinya Sibeko-Kouate papers are open for research! Educator and community activist Sister Makinya Sibeko-Kouate (nee Harriet Smith) was celebrated for her efforts to promote Black Studies curricula in the East Bay and to popularize Kwanzaa. Her papers reflect the ways her personal and political lives intersected and offer a window into both Black radical politics and middle class African-American life in the mid-to late 20th century.
Sibeko-Kouate was born into a middle-class family in San Leandro, California on July 1, 1926. Her father, Turner Smith, worked for Calvert Distillers Corp., and her mother, Willette Smith, was active in many African American social clubs and fraternal orders. Sibeko-Kouate grew up in South Berkeley and graduated from Berkeley High in 1947. In the early 1950s, she studied music and teaching at San Francisco State College and ran a small business (Harriet – Ceramic Creations) out of the home she shared with her mother. Sibeko-Kouate attended Merritt College from 1965-1968, where she studied business administration, real estate, and community planning. She received her BA in Black Studies and an MA in Education from Cal State Hayward in the 1970s. At Merritt, Sibeko-Kouate helped develop the Black Studies Department and was the first African-American person elected student body president.
Here are three of the many faces of Sibeko-Kouate. On the left, posing with her ceramic creations, which she advertised on her business card as “hand made gifts to fit your personality”; in the center, pictured with colleagues who also advocated for the discipline of Black Studies and for Black Power: Sid Walton, Ruth Hagwood, and Nathan Hare; and on the right, teaching a class.
Sibeko-Kouate in the classroom (Carton 20, Folder 4)
Sibeko-Kouate was elected president of the Associated Students of Merritt College (ASMC) in Fall 1967. In her welcome address, she notes that “Being a college student in 1967-68 is a bewildering experience…we must proceed toward the future in the context of an unpopular external war and an internal revolution…education should be a maker of a virgin future rather than a slave to an unjust and shopworn past. YOU CAN CHANGE THE WORLD!” Students like Sibeko-Kouate, and faculty, like Walton, sought to change the world by advocating for an African-American Studies Program at Merritt. The flyer on the right advertises a student-community ceremony to celebrate the first graduates of that program.
Harriet for President flyer, circa 1967 (Carton 1, Folder 6)
Welcome from A.S.M.C. President, 1967 (Carton 1, Folder 11)
A Love Supreme Student-Community African-American Libation Ceremony, Merritt College (Carton 1, Folder 29)
Sibeko-Kouate’s influence went beyond Merritt College. She also served as the President of the National Black Student Union and, in 1968, ran an education workshop on student-community relations for Black students on white campuses at the National Black Power conference in Philadelphia. Sibeko-Kouate’s papers contain materials related to Black curricula and Black Student Unions from many schools in California and, especially, the Bay Area. Examples include a brochure from the Black Students Union at Oakland Tech (in the center and on the right).
National Black Power Conference program, Philadelphia, 1968 (Carton 6, Folder 5)
Black Student Union, Oakland Tech High School (front) Carton 5, Folder 30)
Black Student Union Oakland Tech (Back)
Several celebrations of Sibeko-Kouate’s life referred to her as the “Queen Mother of Kwanzaa,” and her papers contain evidence of her efforts to define and promote the holiday. Examples include these flyers and her notes from an Organizational Committee meeting in Seattle. (Most documents in the collection spell the holiday “Kwanza.” That is the original spelling of the African harvest festival on which the celebration is based. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, a seventh letter was added to correspond with the seven African principles honored during the holiday. Both spellings are correct.)
Kwanza: A Black Value System, circa 1971 (Carton 8, Folder 3)
Sibeko-Kouate came into contact with a wide range of political and cultural organizations, either through her direct participation in them, or through ephemera she gathered at events she attended. The materials she collected document decades of African-American cultural life in the Bay Area, including visual arts, music, dance, theater, film, poetry, books, fashion shows, cultural festivals, sporting events, and the culinary arts. Events ranged from the very local (a night of entertainment at Merritt College), to benefits (for the Parent-Infant Neighborhood Center), to appearances by well-known performers and politicians at community events (Nina Simone, the Chambers Brothers, and Congressman Ron Dellums) . The fact that Sibkeo-Kouate collected these flyers and programs reflected her awareness of their historical significance.
“A Night of Black,” Merritt College (Carton 1, Folder 31)
“Fashions to Save Our Children” a benefit, 1973 (Carton 10, Folder 42)
Dignity Day Extravaganza, Oakland Coliseum, 1971 (Carton 10, Folder 42)
The collection documents how Sibeko-Kouate campaigned for politicians, supported the Black Panthers, and was a community organizer. The buttons on the left reflect her politics, the flyer in the middle asks residents to support a boycott to end police brutality, and the notes on the right document a July 1968 incident when Berkeley police assaulted Sibeko-Kouate and her mother after entering their home without permission. It’s not clear whether the assault motivated the boycott or was just another incident of police brutality in the Black community – but the cause of the organizers was very clear: “Our cause is Justice. We reject the idea of supporting businesses that sanction Police Brutality and the disregard for human dignity…Berkeley is run like a plantation…Plantation days are over. Use your dollars to fight your battles…Blacks keep downtown Berkeley in business. We will boycott businesses until JUSTICE flows.”
Political buttons, late 1960s, early 1970s (Carton 28)
Support the Boycott flyer circa 1968 (Carton 8, Folder 24)
The bulk of Sibeko-Kouate’s papers cover the years 1939-1975 and document significant cultural and political changes over that time. The album on the left is from a 1953 Calvert Distillers gathering that Sibeko-Kouate’s father Turner attended. The meeting “represents the first time any industry gathered its men covering the Negro market from all over the country to meet in New York with its top executives for a two-way exchange of ideas on business.” The gathering included a testimonial dinner honoring Thurgood Marshall. Tubie Resnki, an Executive Vice President, said “This trip is another leaf in the Calvert book of leadership in interracial affairs.” A 1969 calendar produced by Seagram Distillers, Calvert’s parent company (on the right), celebrates “Famous Americans and their Significant Contributions” to the history of the United States. Someone (presumably Sibeko-Kouate) crossed out the outdated/offensive term “Negro” and replaced it with “Black.” This item’s contrast with her father’s souvenir from the early 1950s captures a cultural and political shift in rhetoric that can be seen throughout the collection.
Souvenir album, Calvert Distillers Corp., 1953 (Carton 20, Folder 8)
Historical Calendar, 1969 (Flat Box 3)
It is exciting that Sibeko-Kouate’s papers contain nearly 100 home movies (8mm and 16mm) that document vacations, celebrations, and other social gatherings with family and friends (circa 1955-1969). These films, like the Calvert album, other photographs, personalia, and family papers in the collection document the everyday lives of middle-class African Americans in the 20th century. (Please note: the films are not currently available for viewing.)
8mm and 16mm home movies (Carton 26)
Home movie – birthday party, 1956
For more information about the collection, access the catalog record and finding aid for the Sister Makinya Sibeko-Kouate papers (BANC MSS 2019/135) here:
Brianna Iswono is a third-year undergraduate student at UC Berkeley majoring in chemical engineering. In the Fall 2024 semester, Brianna is working with Roger Eardley-Pryor of the Oral History Center to earn academic credits through Berkeley’s Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program (URAP). URAP provides opportunities for undergraduates to work closely with Berkeley scholars on cutting edge research projects for which Berkeley is world-renowned. This “From the Archives” article emerged from Brianna’s research in the Oral History Center’s long standing Sierra Club Oral History Project.
Laurence I. Moss, who recorded his oral history in 1992, integrated engineering innovation with environmental protection in ways that inspire me as a chemical engineering student who wants to contribute towards sustainability. Today, efforts to reduce carbon emissions and combat climate change are increasingly prominent in academia and technological industries. The surge of various electric cars, solar power installations, and increased sustainability awareness begs the question: how has this shift towards a more green future been feasible? This shift has required, and continues to require, technical developments with environmental goals. Laurence I. Moss was a nuclear engineer who, in the 1960s and 1970s, became a national leader in the Sierra Club. Moss used his technical expertise for advancements in engineering as well as developing processes to prioritize environmental protections.
Laurence I. Moss, a nuclear engineer and Sierra Club President from 1973-1974, recorded his oral history in 1992.
Laurence I. Moss’s early life and education laid the groundwork for his expertise in engineering, equipping him with the technical knowledge to contribute meaningfully to the nuclear industry. Moss was born in 1935 during the Great Depression. He was raised in Queens and Brooklyn in New York City by parents who, as he said, believed deeply in the “American Dream.” He attended the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he studied chemical engineering as an undergraduate. Driven by his passions in math and science, he described wanting a career where “people would be judged on their merits and on their ability to contribute.” Continuing to spark his interests and explore new fields, Moss completed a graduate program at MIT in nuclear engineering, a field he was previously unfamiliar with.
Moss’s work on nuclear reactors, particularly at Rockwell International, highlighted his ability to understand and improve cutting-edge technologies, a key skill that later influenced his advocacy for sustainable energy solutions. Prior to Rockwell International, Moss worked for nearly ten years at the Santa Susana nuclear field laboratory in Simi Hills where he designed and constructed various nuclear power reactors. He focused on developing safer nuclear technologies as the key engineer for testing so-called “critical experiments”—that is, low-power nuclear physics experiments conducted with nuclear reactors that avoid producing large amounts of fission products. This work laid a foundation for broader environmental impacts that he pursued in his later career at Rockwell International. Reflecting on his time at Rockwell, Moss shared, ”It was very rewarding too when you spend several months doing a highly theoretical calculation which makes certain assumptions about physical and nuclear properties, and predicts on the basis of these assumptions that a certain result will happen under these unusual circumstances. And then you go out and test it, and indeed that’s exactly what happens.” After acquiring first-hand experience managing nuclear-scale trials and operations, Moss joined the Sierra Club, and his work efforts soon transitioned towards processes that targeted innovative and renewable energy alternatives.
The personal connection Moss had to nature and his growing awareness of environmental issues, such as pollution and habitat destruction, inspired his shift towards engineering solutions that balanced technical progress with environmental preservation. His admiration of the natural environment grew from his youth in a rural setting where he spent most of his time outdoors. Later in life, seeing the effects of pollution in Los Angeles strengthened his belief that engineering should play a role in protecting the environment. Recalling these aspects, especially from his daily commute, Moss shared, “Another influence was the smog in the L.A. Basin. I remember my feelings at the end of the day, usually driving down from the Santa Susana Mountains to the San Fernando Valley and seeing a blanket of smog over the valley. Thinking about living in that polluted environment and how that had to change.” Seeing the impact of pollution firsthand inspired Moss to turn his personal convictions into action by using his engineering knowledge to advocate for environmental protections.
Moss became a prominent figure in the Sierra Club where he leveraged his engineering expertise for environmental advocacy, including influencing key decisions on energy production and infrastructure through a quantitative approach. He encapsulated his values by asserting, “I wanted to know how many pounds, how many tons, how much toxicity, how many people are at risk, what is the probability of distribution for the hazards, the number of people who can be affected by a single incident, and the consequences of that incident.” Moss joined the Sierra Club in 1959, remained active for over fifteen years, and served as the first non-Californian president of the Club from 1973 to 1974. His leadership was characterized by providing data and analytical information to illuminate the economic and environmental trade-offs of energy production and conservation. During his tenure, Moss opposed construction of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in central California, not in opposition to nuclear power, per se, but by emphasizing its potential dangers in an earthquake-prone area as well as concerns about the plant’s long-term sustainability. In Congressional hearings, he also contributed economic analyses to oppose dams in the Grand Canyon, and instead he advocated for nuclear power as a cleaner, more environmentally sustainable, and cost-effective alternative to burning coal or oil. Moss approached this argument by claiming the dams in the Grand Canyon were not necessary for the economic success of the Central Arizona Project (CAP). He shared, “Those dams were not the key factors in subsidizing the Central Arizona Project. One, we did the calculation that the Bureau of Reclamation did and took out both the costs of and the revenue from the two Grand Canyon dams. At the end of the fifty-year period, you ended up with about the same amount of money with the Central Arizona Project subsidized as with the dams in the calculation.” By merging his analytical mind and engineering expertise, Moss played a key role in broadening the Sierra Club’s mission, helping shift its focus strictly from wildlife conservation to address the broader environmental challenges of his time.
The oral history of Laurence I. Moss offers testimony to the crucial role that engineering and technical expertise can play in creating a safer, more environmentally friendly future. His integration of engineering and environmental protection inspires future generations of engineers like me, who hope to contribute to the sustainable engineering industry. Moss’s life, work, and advocacy emphasized deep interconnections between economics, engineering, and environmental action. He serves as a lasting source of inspiration for students and professionals who share his values in the ongoing pursuit for a healthier planet.
The Oral History Center of The Bancroft Library preserves voices of people from all walks of life, with varying political perspectives, national origins, and ethnic backgrounds. We are committed to open access and our oral histories and interpretive materials are available online at no cost to scholars and the public. You can find our oral histories from the search feature on our home page. Search by name, keyword, and several other criteria. Sign up for our monthly newsletter featuring think pieces, new releases, podcasts, Q&As, and everything oral history. Access the most recent articles from our home page or go straight to our blog home.
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This map shows the locations of the bookstores, printers, and publishers in San Francisco in 1955 according to Polk’s Directory (SFPL link). The map highlights the quantity thereof as well as their centrality in the downtown. That number combined with location suggests that publishing was a thriving industry.
Using my 1955 publishing dataset in Google My Maps (https://www.google.com/maps/d) I have linked the directory addresses of those business categories with a contemporary street map and used different colors to highlight the different types. The contemporary street map allows people to get a sense of how the old data compares to what they know (if anything) about the modern city.
My initial Google My Map, however, was a bit hard to see because of the lack of contrast between my points as well as how they blended in with the base map. One of the things that I like to keep in mind when working with digital tools is that I can often change things. Here, I’m going to poke at and modify my
Base map
Point colors
Information panels
Sharing settings
My goal in doing so is to make the information I want to understand for my research more visible. I want, for example, to be able to easily differentiate between the 1955 publishing and printing houses versus booksellers. Here, contrasting against the above, is the map from the last post:
Click on the map for the last post in this series.
Quick Reminder About the Initial Map
To map data with geographic coordinates, one needs to head to a GIS program (US.gov discussion of). In part because I didn’t yet have the latitude and longitude coordinates filled in, I headed over to Google My Maps. I wrote about this last post, so I shan’t go into much detail. Briefly, those steps included:
Logging into Google My Maps (https://www.google.com/maps/d/)
Clicking the “Create a New Map” button
Uploading the data as a CSV sheet (or attaching a Google Sheet)
Naming the Map something relevant
Now that I have the map, I want to make the initial conclusions within my work from a couple weeks ago stand out. To do that, I logged back into My Maps and opened up the saved “Bay Area Publishers 1955.”
Base Map
One of the reasons that Google can provide My Maps at no direct charge is because of their advertising revenue. To create an effective visual, I want to be able to identify what information I have without losing my data among all the ads.
Screen capture from 2024 showing thumbnails for possible base map design.
To move in that direction, I head over to the My Map edit panel where there is a “Base map” option with a down arrow. Hitting that down arrow, I am presented with an option of nine different maps. What works for me at any given moment depends on the type of information I want my data paired with.
The default for Google Maps is a street map. That street map emphasizes business locations and roads in order to look for directions. Some of Google’s My Maps’ other options focus on geographic features, such as mountains or oceans. Because I’m interested in San Francisco publishing, I want a sense of the urban landscape and proximity. I don’t particularly need a map focused on ocean currents. What I do want is a street map with dimmer colors than Google’s standard base map so that my data layer is distinguishable from Google’s landmarks, stores, and other points of interest.
Nonetheless, when there are only nine maps available, I like to try them all. I love maps and enjoy seeing the different options, colors, and features, despite the fact that I already know these maps well.
The options that I’m actually considering are “Light Political” (option center left in the grid) “Mono City” (center of the grid) or “White Water” (bottom right). These base map options focus on that lighter-toned background I want, which allows my dataset points to stand clearly against them.
For me, “Light Political” is too pale. With white streets on light gray, the streets end up sinking into the background, losing some of the urban landscape that I’m interested in. The bright, light blue of the ocean also draws attention away from the city and toward the border, which is precisely what it wants to do as a political map.
I like “Mono City” better as it allows my points to pop against a pale background while the ocean doesn’t draw focus to the border.
Of these options, however, I’m going to go with the “White Water” street map. Here, the city is done up with various grays and oranges, warming the map in contrast to “Mono City.” The particular style also adds detail to some of the geographic landmarks, drawing attention to the city as a lived space. Consequently, even though the white water creeps me out a bit, this map gets closest to what I want in my research’s message. I also know that for this data set, I can arrange the map zoom to limit the amount of water displayed on the screen.
Point colors
Now that I’ve got my base map, I’m on to choosing point colors. I want them to reflect my main research interests, but I’ve also got to pick within the scope of the limited options that Google provides.
Color choices and symbols one can use for points as of 2024.
I head over to the Edit/Data pane in the My Maps interface. There, I can “Style” the dataset. Specifically, I can tell the GIS program to color my markers by the information in any one of my columns. I could have points all colored by year (here, 1955) or state (California), rendering them monochromatic. I could go by latitude or name and individually select a color for each point. If I did that, I’d run up against Google’s limited, 30-color palette and end up with lots of random point colors before Google defaulted to coloring the rest gray.
What I choose here is the types of business, which are listed under the column labeled “section.”
In that column, I have publishers, printers, and three different types of booksellers:
Printers-Book and Commercial
Publishers
Books-Retail
Books-Second Hand
Books-Wholesale
To make these stand out nicely against my base map, I chose contrasting colors. After all, using contrasting colors can be an easy way to make one bit of information stand out against another.
In this situation, my chosen base map has quite a bit of light grays and oranges. Glancing at my handy color wheel, I can see purples are opposite the oranges. Looking at the purples in Google’s options, I choose a darker color to contrast the light map. That’s one down.
For the next, I want Publishers to compliment Printers but be a clearly separate category. To meet that goal, I picked a darker purply-blue shade.
Moving to Books-Retail, I want them to stand as a separate category from the Printers and Publishers. I want them to complement my purples and still stand out against the grays and oranges. To do that, I go for one of Google’s dark greens.
Looking at the last two categories, I don’t particularly care if people can immediately differentiate the second-hand or wholesale bookstores from the retail category. Having too many colors can also be distracting. To minimize clutter of message, I’m going to make all the bookstores the same color.
Pop-ups/ Information Dock
Example of editable data from data sheet row.
For this dataset, the pop-ups are not overly important. What matters for my argument here is the spread. Nonetheless, I want to be aware of what people will see if they click on my different data points.
[Citylights pop-up right]
In this shot, I have an example of what other people will see. Essentially, it’s all of the columns converted to a single-entry form. I can edit these if desired and—importantly—add things like latitude and longitude.
The easiest way to drop information from the pop-up is to delete the column from the data sheet and re-import the data.
Sharing
As I finish up my map, I need to decide whether I want to keep it private (the default) or share it. Some of my maps, I keep private because they’re lists of favorite restaurants or loosely planned vacations. For example, a sibling is planning on getting married in Cadiz in Spain, and I have a map tagging places I am considering for my travel itinerary.
“Share map” pop up with options for making a map available.
Here, in contrast, I want friends and fellow interested parties to be able to see it and find it. To make sure that’s possible, I clicked on “Share” above my layers. On the pop-up (as figured here) I switched the toggles to allow “Anyone with this link [to] view” and “Let others search for and find this map on the internet.” The latter, in theory, will permit people searching for 1955 publishing data in San Francisco to find my beautiful, high-contrast map.
Important: This is also where I can find the link to share the published version of the map. If I pull the link from the top of my window, I’d share the editable version. Be aware, however, that the editable and public versions look a pinch different. As embedded at the top of this post, the published version will not allow the viewer to edit the material and will have the sidebar for showing my information, as opposed to the edit view’s pop-ups.
Next steps
To see how those institutions sit in the 1950s world, I am inclined to see how those plots align across a 1950s San Francisco map. To do that, I’d need to find an appropriate map and add a layer under my dataset. At this time, however, Google Maps does not allow me to add image and/or map layers. So, in two weeks I’ll write about importing image layers into Esri’s ArcGIS.
To my delight, I can now announce that the next Digital Humanities Working Group at UC Berkeley is November 4 at 1pm in Doe Library, Room 223.
For the workshop, we have two amazing speakers for lightning talks. They are:
Danny Benett, MA Student in Folklore, will discuss the Berkeley folklore archive which is making ~500,000 folklore items digitally accessible.
Adrienne Serra, Digital Projects Archivist at The Bancroft Library, will demo an interactive map in ArcGIS allowing users to explore digital collections about the Spanish and Mexican Land grants in California.
We hope to see you there! Do consider signing up (link) as we order pizza and like to have loose numbers.
Flyer with D-Lab and Data & Digital Scholarship’s Digital Humanities Working Group, November 4 @ 1pm session.
The UC Berkeley Digital Humanities Working Group is a research community founded to facilitate interdisciplinary conversations in digital humanities and cultural analytics. It is a welcoming and supportive community for all things digital humanities.
The event is co-sponsored by the D-Lab and Data & Digital Scholarship Services.
Check out these photography books generously donated by Richard Sun. Inquire with the Art History/Classics Library to view them in 308F Doe Library. Please request in advance, as they may be located off site.
These rare books are part of a generous curated donation from Richard Sun. They may be viewed in the Art History/ Classics Library. Request them in advance as they may be stored off site.
Here are a selection of recently received donations of rare photobooks generously curated and donated by Richard Sun. They may be viewed in the Art History/ Classics Library. Please request in advance, as they may be located off site.
UC Berkeley supports a variety of ways our authors can participate in open access publishing. At its heart, open access literature is “digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions” (Suber, 2019). Open access materials can be read and used by anyone.
But you might be wondering, why is UC Berkeley concerned about trying to make research more openly available and accessible? Well, one fundamental reason is that the research and teaching mission of the UC includes the aim of “transmitting advanced knowledge,” and as part of doing that, our faculty, researchers, and students create and share their scholarship.
This system of scholarly publishing includes traditional publications such as peer-reviewed academic articles, scholarly chapters or books, and conference proceedings. It also includes other types of publications such as digital projects, data sets and visualizations, and working papers.
In this blog post, we’ll provide an update on how the UC Berkeley Library is fostering open access book publishing. And we’ll also highlight the current progress on supporting OA publishing of scholarly articles.
Library Support for Open Access Books
We know that not all University of California authors are publishing journal articles, and many disciplines—such as arts, humanities, and social sciences—focus on the scholarly monograph as the preferred mode of publishing. Some open access book publishers charge authors (or an author’s institution) a fee in exchange for publishing the book open access, similar to the practice of academic journal publishers charging an “article processing charge” to make a research article open access.
Book authors can realize a variety of benefits with open access publishing, including increasing the reach of their scholarship, building relationships within their academic discipline, garnering more citations, making their scholarly books more affordable for students, improving accessibility for print-disabled users, and more.
UC Berkeley is supporting authors who wish to publish their books open access. The library provides funding assistance and access to publishing platforms and tools for authors to make their books OA.
Berkeley Research Impact Initiative books
The Berkeley Research Impact Initiative (BRII) is a program to foster broad public access to the work of scholars by encouraging the UCB community to take advantage of open access publishing opportunities—including books and journal articles. BRII is the local open access fund that helps defray the costs associated with publishing open access books and research articles. For books, BRII can contribute up to $10,000 per book for it to be published open access. Below are recent UCB-authored books published with the assistance of BRII.
The Equitably Resilient City
Zachary B. Lamb (Assistant Professor, City and Regional Planning, UC Berkeley) and Lawrence J. Vale (MIT)
Since 2021, the UC Berkeley Library has had an institutional open access book agreement with Springer Nature. The partnership provides open access funding to UC Berkeley affiliated authors who have books accepted for publication in Springer, Palgrave, and Apress imprints. This means that these authors can publish their books open access at no direct cost to them. The agreement covers all disciplines published by Springer. Every book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license for free access and downloading. Here are a few recent books published open access as a result of the UCB-Springer agreement.
University-Community Partnerships for Transformative Education: Sowing Seeds of Resistance and Renewal
Mara Welsh Mahmood (School of Education, UC Berkeley), John Cano (School of Education, UC Berkeley), Marjorie Elaine (School of Education and Information Studies, UCLA)
This open access edited volume reports on a unique network of innovative in-school and out-of-school programs, University-Community Links (UC Links), which is coordinated through the UC Links Office in the Berkeley School of Education. UC Links connects university faculty and students with young people and their families in diverse communities around the world. University-Community Partnerships for Transformative Education: Sowing Seeds of Resistance and Renewal includes 20 chapters describing university-community partnerships and programs in California in the US as well as Germany, Italy, Spain, Uganda, and Uruguay (both in English and Spanish!). The volume also includes first-person reflections describing how participation in UC Links programs has transformed participants’ thinking about teaching and learning and also has transformed individual lives.
Co-editor Mara Welsh Mahmood says:
“It was imperative to all contributing authors that the knowledge and experiences described in this volume be accessible to anyone interested in learning more about these university-community partnership programs. Authors envisioned using the chapters in their courses and also being able to share them with school and community partners without associated costs. The UC Berkeley Open Access agreement with Springer allows this book to be given away—young people who contributed first-person narratives can share this with their families and friends; academic scholars interested in developing a partnership with a local school or community can easily point people to the book to learn more about what these partnerships can look like in practice. Already the book has been accessed 16,000 times after two months of publication!”
Deep-Time Images in the Age of Globalization: Rock Art in the 21st Century
Margaret W. Conkey (Professor Emerita of Anthropology, UC Berkeley), Oscar Moro Abadía (Memorial University of Newfoundland), Josephine McDonald (University of Western Australia)
UC Berkeley Library continues to support open access book publishing via Luminos, the open access arm of the University of California Press. The Library membership with Luminos means that UC Berkeley authors who have books accepted for publication through the UC Press can publish their book open access with a heavily discounted book processing charge. When combined with additional funding support through BRII, a UC Berkeley book author could potentially publish their book open access with the costs being covered fully by the Library. Luminos books are published under Creative Commons licenses with free downloads.
Pressbooks platform & workshops
The UC Berkeley Library hosts an instance of Pressbooks, an online platform through which the UCB community members can create open access books, open educational resources (OER), and other types of digital scholarship.
The Scholarly Communication & Information Policy (SCIP) office continues to offer twice/year Pressbooks workshop and demo where participants can learn how to navigate the platform and create and publish their own eBooks and open educational resources. (Note: we just hosted a workshop in September, but watch out for another one coming soon.)
Every year during the fall semester SCIP hosts an author panel to unpack the process of turning a dissertation into a book. One of the topics discussed during the panel are options for open access publishing. RSVP now for the upcoming author panel on November 12, 2024, 11:00am-12:30pm.
UC contributing to the broader ecosystem of open access book publishing
A goal of the UC Libraries is to strategically advance open scholarship by extending its support for OA book publishing. At the systemwide level, the UC is contributing to several open access book publishing ventures, including Opening the Future, MIT’s Direct to Open, the University of Michigan Press’ Fund to Mission, and the Open Book Collective. In general, these models secure investments from libraries or other stakeholders, and agree to publish some or all of their frontlist books open access, with limited or zero direct cost to the authors. The backlist books are made accessible to participating institutions.
Library Support for Open Access Articles
While the topic of this post focuses mainly on open access books, UC Berkeley (and the UC more generally) offers a wide range of support to help authors publish scholarly articles. The UC’s system-wide Open Access Policies ensure that university-affiliated authors can deposit their final, peer-reviewed research articles into eScholarship, our institutional repository, immediately upon publication in a journal. Once they’re in eScholarship, the articles may be read by anyone for free (not to mentioned preserved for longer term access).
As of October 2024, the University of California has entered into 24 system-wide Open Access Publishing Agreements and Discounts with scholarly publishers (most recently a new agreement with Taylor & Francis). These agreements permit UC corresponding authors to publish open access in covered journals, with the publishing fees being covered in part (or in full) by the UC. In fiscal year 2023-24 UC Berkeley authors published 527 open access articles as a part of these system wide open access publishing agreements.
Locally, the UC Berkeley Library continues to offer the Berkeley Research Impact Initiative (BRII). This program helps UC Berkeley authors defray article processing charges (APCs) that are sometimes required to publish in fully open access journals (note that BRII doesn’t reimburse authors for publishing in “hybrid” journals—that is, subscription journals that simply offer a separate option to pay to make an individual article open access). This past year BRII provided funding for the publication of 45 open access articles. UC Berkeley authors can take advantage of BRII assistance where there is no other system wide open access agreement in place.
Wrapping up
In this post, we highlighted several ways that the University of California—and specifically UC Berkeley—is supporting scholarly authors to create and share open access books. In addition to providing financial assistance, platforms, and publishing guidance, the Library is committed to promoting the broader OA book publishing ecosystem. We’ll continue to explore a variety of approaches to support the UC Berkeley community (and beyond) who wish to publish books on open access terms.
If you’re interested to learn more about how you can create and publish an open access book, visit our website or send an email to schol-comm@berkeley.edu.
