Re: Maps

Ah, the map contingent woke up early this morning... Thanks for the many replies so far, which as they all decant together, will surely provide guidance, and may even allay some of my fears.

I have two types of interest in this question.

One is of course practical. I'm putting up a large website (when come da Messiah) in which I hope to have a number of maps of various kinds and places; some clickmaps, some not; ideally, some architectural plans. "Italy" was a loose example: Etruscan remains of Umbria, Romanesque churches of the Pyrinies, the Roman road network of Central Italy, etc. There would be a good deal of my own work: in the selection of items to note on the map; in coloring and typeface; in place naming (e.g., _Tuder_ rather than _Todi_); etc.

  But I still intend to use a number of other people's maps as sources. Never a single map in any one map of mine, but often an amalgam of no more than maybe 3, using one to correct the other, and my on-the-spot experience to supplement and correct the whole. I certainly intend(ed?) to trace contours rather than redraw them freehand: I have accurate information to try to impart.

  I do have doubts about contours -- I don't know everything, and will of course somehow rely on those of others -- and such matters as projection. There are enough different projections available that the selection of someone else's projection for a small area of Catalunya, for example, is a matter of art? Granted that there are certain projections more likely for small areas on technical grounds, but still, I have room to use some other projection; copying a contour from one of my source maps is also copying a projection, and thus art?

  At the very best, I'm worried that no matter what I do, I will be creating a derivative work, as if I were to take a tune by Bach and a tune by the Beatles and superimpose them: the resulting quodlibet is probably a derivative work, no matter how original it might sound. (I like quodlibets, BTW - one of my favorite discoveries being "Old Macdonald Had a Farm" on top of the "Marseillaise" -- but I digress)

  It also seems to me somehow, but I can't say why nor to what degree, that the smaller the area I make an 'original' map of based on other maps, the more likely it is I'm infringing; as in a projected annotated clickplan of the church of S.Maria sopra Minerva in Rome, based in part on a booklet put out by that church.

  As part of a related project, I've created a largish database of places of the Old World, including longitude, latitude, altitude, names at different periods, bibliographical references, principal monuments, etc. I've drawn on a number of sources, starting with a Rand McNally atlas for coordinates

--> although in cross-checking and occasionally just internal
inspection in the same atlas, I find about 1% of the coordinates given in the index of that atlas to be wrong, whether due to typography or to phantomwork (yes, I'm aware of that; it also exists in book publishing)

then adding several other sources for coordinates, plus afterwards folding in non-coordinate material from many more.

  I then created a program in Hypercard that (for a while, before I tinkered with it!!) drew a map of whatever area I told it to according to one of 3 selectable easy projections, and fit it to my computer screen.

  In doing all of this -- my work -- have I not OTOH infringed by storing and retrieving the work of others in an electronic system? I've used thousands of coordinates from various sources.

  A sample line of the database:

¡Pozzuoli¡Puteoli¡+I.NA+•24492047•£JW|BO:23-24|SI:46,47,199-201£×R׬39¬St. Januarius:martyred|concrete

Anyway, looking at all that, my second interest became purely intellectual. How does *anyone*, other than the initial surveying team or archaeologist, ever draw a legal map?

Bill Thayer
<petworth[_at_]suba.com> Received on Mon May 12 1997 - 12:33:04 GMT