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Spatial Humanities Step By Step: Mapping Wikileaks using Google Fusion Tables

By Kelly Johnston on

We migrated this website to a new platform, and are working to correct formatting errors in older blog posts as a result. If you encounter an error, please send an email to scholarslab@virginia.edu. Thanks!

Are you ready to participate in the Golden Age of online mapping?

So many new mapping tools.  So many online data sources.  So much interest in the Spatial Turn across disciplines.   Where to begin?

Participants in the NEH funded Institute For Enabling Geospatial Scholarship made it clear they wanted a reliable source of helpsheets and tutorials for working with data sources and mapping tools.  Spatial Humanities Step By Step is that growing resource.

We created Step By Step to help aggregate high-quality (yet simple-to-follow) tutorials and provide an opportunity for folks to receive professional acknowledgment for the work that goes into creating them.

In addition to Devin Becker’s newly published contribution on Mapping Wikileaks with Google Fusion Tables, we have in the pipeline tutorials on extracting and quantifying information from historic maps, using Google Earth as a gazetteer, and calculating least cost paths across a landscape.   Already posted are helpsheets for georeferencing historic maps, converting addresses to mapped locations through geocoding, mapping Global Positioning System datasets, and using Google Maps to create a HyperCities project.

We believe folks who invest the time to write easy-to-follow tutorials should receive credit for their work.  Is that you?  Then submit your own work to our supportive review board:

  • Patrick Florance-Tufts University

  • Chris Gist-University of Virginia

  • Tracey Hughes-University of California, San Diego

  • Kelly Johnston-University of Virginia, Editor

  • Scott Nesbit-University of Richmond

  • Bethany Nowviskie-University of Virginia

  • Diana Stuart Sinton-University of Redlands

  • Ginny White-University of Oregon

Our simple process: two reviewers take each submission for a spin to confirm the process is easy to follow, jargon free,  and just works.  Then with consensus, we publish.  If you’d like to volunteer to be called upon as a peer reviewer alongside our current review board please contact me.

I serve as the Step by Step editor and along with my colleagues on the review board we look forward to your contributions.  Check the site for more information: http://spatial.scholarslab.org/step-by-step

Kelly Johnston was GIS Specialist in the Scholars’ Lab.
Cite this post: Kelly Johnston. “Spatial Humanities Step By Step - Mapping Wikileaks using Google Fusion Tables”. Published October 03, 2011. https://scholarslab.lib.virginia.edu/blog/spatial-humanities-step-by-step-mapping-wikileaks-using-google-fusion-tables/. Accessed on .