Ok, so a few weeks ago in Digital History we learned about mashups. Basically, these are web applications which combine data from more than one source into a single tool. There were a number of readings which discussed the potential uses for such applications in the humanities and I thought I had come up with one which would be really interesting. I was halfway through writing a blog on the topic when I realised it already existed.London Ontario's website states that "London has one of the most diverse and extensive inventories of heritage structures in Ontario." Now as a historian, such a statement - which initially seemed to have no supporting evidence - tends to make my skin crawl. I decided I would propose a mashup to rectify this situation. Since most cities have a list of their heritage properties, I thought it could be combined with local digitized maps, or even google maps on a larger scale, in order to illustrate various geographical trends surrounding heritage properties. Unfortunately (for my purposes, not for the general public), this mashup already exists!
If you go to the city map section on the new and improved City of London's website, you can make one of your filters designated heritage properties. From there you can see the building's priority ranking, year built (if known), the predominant architectural style of building, and the by-law number showing the building's designation under the Ontario Heritage Act. This whole undertaking is called the Heritage Sites Inventory. Since I've now found out that this exists I think I need to decide what to do with it...stay tuned.
Image From:
City of London Website. "Interactive CityMap." http://webmap.london.ca/mapclient/main.asp?Script=Heritage&Browser=W3C&Width=1280&Referrer=http://www.london.ca/d.aspx?s=/Heritage/HeritageCityMap.htm&Provider=SVC&K10=0
