Abstract
Placing Transportation History: A Local Example
Track: Teaching with GIS in Higher Education
Author(s): Robert Martin
Dr. Anne Kelly Knowles keynote presentation at the 2008 Esri Education Users Conference got me thinking about how historical maps could be used to develop a transportation database for a local area and to help students to understand the local environment. Therefore I developed a student exercise in head-up digitizing, it would make students familiar with "old" maps as a source of information to build a geodatabase. Specifically, using the 15 minute topographic map series for Allentown (1894), Slatington (1902) and Hamburg (1911) the road, railways and street railway networks were built for the area between Allentown and Reading, Pennsylvania. This area includes Kutztown University which the students are attending. The processes and procedures used in this laboratory exercise are discussed as well as how the "old" data is compared with "modern" data.
Robert Martin
Kutztown University
Department of Geography
Boehm Sci. Bldg. ##112
Kutztown , Pennsylvania 19530
United States
Phone: 610-683-4367
E-mail: martin@kutztown.edu