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This study describes the process of persona-creation in a liberal-arts university well-integrated within a global network of Geographic Information System researchers. We introduce the concept of personas as an effective user experience research methodology with potential applications to academic library services. We detail the collection of data from high-level researchers as a way to inform the library’s strategic planning and programming. We present the results of the study in the form of three personas: Rachel the Novice, A.J. the Professor, and Jean-Paul the Big-Thinker. These results are specific to our institution, but the method itself can transfer to other contexts. We note the study’s limitations in the final analysis, and make suggestions for maintaining and refining the personas to accurately represent the community of users.

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Historical maps tell rich stories, and they are also valuable data objects. They vary greatly in size, type, and context, as well as the kinds and density of information they contain. Historical maps are indeed objects that invite close reading, interpretation, and debate. Whereas a variety of environments exist for the annotation, manipulation, and representation of digital maps, or map-derived data, workflows in the spatial digital humanities can be complex and those environments are not often well integrated. In this article, we describe a prototype named ‘MapFolder’ for studying maps, its algorithms for calculating the areal distortion, its visual design for communicating that distortion, along with a scholarly workflow. We blend annotation practices common in the spatial humanities with the workflows of georeferencing in order to be able to visualize how historic cartographic documents compare with the geospatial representations we are familiar with today. The case studies we use to demonstrate ‘MapFolder’ are maps of the medieval period, a body of maps that are less often studied algorithmically and that are usually avoided in typical workflows of georeferencing. MapFolder is by no means a prototype designed to work exclusively with medieval maps, but since maps of this period are only partially geographic in their design, they offer a particularly fruitful opportunity to rethink the algorithmic manipulation of historical depictions of the world. Working with this complex data from the humanities allows us, as well, to propose the use of visualization for critical, comparative spatial analysis in pre-modern studies and beyond.