DavidRumsey.com adds text searching
It’s here it’s here it’s here it’s here.
So maybe The Legal Genealogist is a little excited.
But it’s here!
Text searching on DavidRumsey maps!
Now, there isn’t a genealogist alive who doesn’t love maps.
And not a genealogist who’s ever lived who doesn’t think we’ve won the jackpot when we find an ancestor’s name on a map. On a post road. Or near a battlefield. Or showing homesteads. Or just about any map of any kind.
But finding those names on those maps has been like searching for a needle in a haystack.
Until now.
Because it’s here now: one of the very best map collections online has added text searching to its maps.
The maps collection at DavidRumsey.com is now text-searchable.
First planned more than a year ago, the text search feature results from a collaboration with Machines Reading Maps (MRM). In a one-year project funded by David Rumsey himself, the MRM teams (including researchers at The Alan Turing Institute, the University of Minnesota, and the Austrian Institute of Technology) brought their map-reading tools and methods into play with the Rumsey collection of 60,000 digitized historical maps.1
And it’s now here. One hundred million words indexed on 57,000 maps — and if there are mistakes, users can help correct any errors.
Oh, man…
So… definitely begin by reading the instructions. Yeah, yeah, I know, we wanna play, but this will really help. There’s a whole Guide to Searching and Annotating Text on Maps on the website that explains how to use this feature to best advantage.2
And then go play.
Davenports in Virginia? Maybe Davenport’s Ford is mine.
Dunno yet, but I’m sure going to find out.
Text searching on maps.
Best thing since sliced bread…
Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “Text searching on maps!,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 21 Sep 2023).
SOURCES
- See Judy G. Russell, “Rumsey Maps to be text-searchable,” The Legal Genealogist, posted 7 Mar 2022 (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : accessed 21 Sep 2023). ↩
- David Rumsey Map Collection, “Guide to Searching and Annotating Text,” DavidRumsey.com (https://www.davidrumsey.com/ : accessed 21 Sep 2023. ↩
Exciting news indeed – looking forward to trying it out. If only my home internet connection wasn’t so woefully slow, it would be even more fun!
This is wonderful – thank you so much for sharing this news!
Is anyone else having trouble finding the dropdown menu with the advanced search option?
You’re right — it’s hard to find. See today’s blog.
As the other have said, this is wonderful. Looking for my maternal grandfather’s surname, there were only 92. There was a town in Alberta Canada and in Connecticut, several Sanborn maps, a miscellaneous specialized maps plus many maps of New Hampshire where there is a town with that name. This afternoon has gone by quickly