NLS Map Georeferencer

From 2011-2017, the National Library of Scotland participated in the Georeferencer project, allowing a selection of 1,000 early maps of Scotland to be georeferenced as a crowdsourcing project and visualised. There is further information on the rationale and background for this in:

Georeferencer: Crowdsourced Georeferencing for Map Library Collections, Volume 18, Number 11/12, November/December 2012

Whilst the project was a useful pilot, and the Georeferencer application continues to be developed and widely deployed, there were a number of reasons why we discontinued it. The Georeferencer application was effectively separate from our main Georeferenced Maps application, where all our georeferenced maps can be viewed. The Georeferencer application worked best for single-sheet maps, but as most of our map digitisation has involved series maps, our semi-automated internal georeferencing has been most effective for these. The costs of the Georeferencer application, its external hosting and control, and its proprietary nature were also relevant. Klokan Technologies continue to upgrade and enhance the Georeferencer application, allowing individuals to georeference their own maps, and maps to be consumed into Georeferencer using the IIIF protocol, so there are now other ways that our maps can still be used within Georeferencer.