Wednesday, March 12, 2008

What can I say but "WOO HOO!!!"?



This morning on the MapHist list, Dr. Paul van den Brink of the Explokart Research Team at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands announced a new digitized atlas of Blaeu, the "Toonneel des Aerdrycks, ofte Nieuwe Atlas" of 1659. The viewer shows six volumes, including the texts, and was ordered for by the city of Leiden.

The website is in Dutch. I have looked upon the viewer and found it totally sweet.

3 comments:

peacay said...

totally sweet

Absolutely. I think this is the best flash viewer I've ever seen.

Hugh Yeman said...

I'm a programmer but I'm not a web guy, so I'm not quite sure what's Flash and what's not. However, if you generalized the category to "best viewer", the following would be my two favorites.

1. The University of Oregon's . I just love the way they have multiple layers, including the symbolism. I did an entry on this one.

2. The British Library's Online Gallery. Check out the FLEMISH MASTERS IN MINIATURE link. The Golf Book is so beautiful it's to die for.

peacay said...

These things are subjective of course but part of the reason I love the Ayrdricks site is because it isn't as resources intensive as those 2 you just mentioned. It's perhaps partly related to having ADSL and also, I have specific needs/desires related to filching for my site. So Ayrdricks is fast with a large viewing area: 2 of my major criteria.

I find the TTP set at the British Library to be unnecessarily gimmicky. I just want access with speed and quality and don't really want magnifying overlays and superfluous bandwidth hogging accoutrements. (this is a better example of turn the pages viewer to my mind; but of course, it's not cartography)

I do agree that the Nolli site is exceptional - the accoutrements add information and not just gimmicks.