Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library “Creates Amazing Historic Atlas Tool”

From the Chelsea Record:

… with an amazing new tool created by the Leventhal Map and Education Center at the Boston Public Library, dozens of detailed historical atlases and modern maps can be called up and compared at the touch of a button.

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“With AtlasScope, we identified 100 of the most important atlases within Boston and its immediate neighbors,” he [Garrett Nelson of the Leventhal] said. “There are atlases for all over the state, but we decided to focus on Boston property and the near suburbs and within the times where we know we have the copyright.”

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Nelson said they have spent the last year digitizing all of those maps – some of which were already online – but more importantly they used computer programs to piece them together. That allows users to move through the atlases, from year to year, as if it were a typical Google Map. Users can even use their phones to geo-reference themselves on the historic maps – meaning you can walk down the street and use the old maps and new Google Maps to explore what is there and what was there in the past.

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