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An Animated Geography Lesson

The Digital Scholarship Lab (DSL) at the University of Richmond recently created a website with a great American atlas: Charles O. Paullin and John K. Wright’s Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States, first published in 1932. I love maps and this has been wonderfully reproduced with nearly 700 images. It gets better. There are numerous enhancements to trace change over time. For example, I have an interest in American religious history, and recently completed a National Register of Historic Places evaluation of a former Augustana Synod Lutheran Church in New London, Minnesota. With the atlas, I pulled up an animated map that showed the expansion of Lutheran churches from 1775 to 1890. This is an excellent example of how we can make resources available on the internet — and then add value with thoughtful digital tools.

Take a look.