A seminar “Geovisualization of cultural heritage resources on the Internet” took place on 7 September 2010 in Central Archives of Historical Records, Warsaw. The seminar presented the results of the research project “Methods of mapping movable monuments“, which was carried out by the Institute of Geodesy and Cartography and the Research and Academic Computer Network. The project focused on the presentation of movable monuments on the map in a new and attractive form for the user. The aim was to enable users to get to the objects descriptions and presentations using advanced navigation on the map, taking into account the characteristics of movable monuments.

Figure 1. Map of Polish cultural heritage.

Movable monuments were selected as a source object’s type. As the name suggests, movable monuments are  the objects that can easily change their geographical location. They include objects such as paintings, sculptures, etc. Typically, a description of such object contains a wide range of spatial references. They can be divided as follows:

• places being a subject,
• places of creation,
• places of storage.

In the case of monuments, spatial reference is often associated with the old naming and administrative division. Therefore, the descriptions of movable monuments have been prepared by various experts, including archivists and historians.

Appropriate presentation was also the strand in the project. When a user searches a collection of spatial data, not only he is interested in a particular location, but also in a county, a region or a province. It was hence decided to present different levels of spatial information granularity on the map. In addition, the differences between spatial references’ types:

• associated with the places being a subject,
• being a place of creation,
• being a place of storage

is shown in a clear,  eye-catching way.

Now there is a  showcase for the following resources:

• objects from the project “City in the Archival Documents’ – the result of cooperation with the Central Archives of Historical Records,
• works of art from the church in Żórawin – the result of collaboration with the staff of Art History Institute of the University of Wroclaw.

From a technical standpoint, the following standards were used for the objects descriptions:

• Encoded Archival Description – for archival materials,
• ObjectId – for the monuments.

Furthermore, a created software is a mixture of free (for example: PostgreSQL + PostGIS) and commercial (eg: ActionScript 3) solutions.

We encourage you to look at the project and test it! More information about the project can be found here, while on the seminar here.