The research-analytic part of preparation of a cartographic work: a case study of an analysis of historical atlases as the basis for creating the Czech Historical Atlas

Abstract

A new large historical atlas on the Czech and Czechoslovak history of the 20th century is currently being prepared under the project of the Czech Historical Atlas. In this article, the authors introduce the basic research-analytic part of preparation of this cartographic work. It is based on the extensive research and subsequent analysis of the already published and similarly focused Czech (Czechoslovak) and foreign historical atlases, which gave the team sources of inspiration for processing the concept of the new atlas. The choice, the subsequent description and the analysis were achieved by the application of predetermined criteria. The result is a large database of selected historical atlases produced in the whole world after 1950, which contains more than 400 items. In addition to the standard bibliographic description, it contains a series of further characteristics (methods of thematic cartography, applied scale series, etc.) and references to the excerpts. The authors have decided to make the database freely available on a web portal, because they assume that it can be broadly used for research leading to development in the area of atlas cartography. KEYWORDS historical atlas; analysis of atlases; conception of atlas; Czech Historical Atlas

Database of Historical Atlases: An Interactive Web Application

“…The selection of historical atlases and their characteristics was performed according to predetermined methodology concept given by Bláha, Močičková (2018). The selection was based on two criteria:…”

Selected Possibilities of Data Excerption From the Database of Historical Atlases

“…The initial classification that consisted of 16 methods of thematic cartography identified in the content of 88 atlases was generalized into 9 classes representing the basic groups of methods of thematic cartography -area-class maps "Ar", isoline maps "Iz", diagram maps "KDall", choropleth maps "K", figural symbols "Lb2", line symbols "Ll2", specific methods "Sp", dot (density) maps "Te" and time methods "čas". The coding and the classification of the methods (as well as the coding and classification of the map categories) follow on from [3].…”

“…The original 9 classes representing the publishing countries of 88 atlases were grouped into four classes on the basis of the political and historical context. The generalized classification follows on from the second selection criterion of geographical determination that determined the countries whose cartographic production of the atlases would be examined [3]. The first group "Central Europe" is comprised of the member states of the Visegrad Group (Czechia, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary).…”

“…The authors also deal with relations between the thematic focus of the atlas and the applied methods of thematic cartography. All analyses are performed on the sample of 88 atlas works.Historical atlases and their characteristics were selected according to the methodology concept devised by Bláha and Močičková [3]. On the basis of two criteria defining the time and geographical delimitation of historical atlases for the study, two students of the Czech Technical University in Prague collected information about selected Czech (Czechoslovak) and foreign historical atlases released after 1950.…”

Structural Cartographic Analysis of a Thematic Atlas Work

“…In the classification, the authors drew upon previous studies (e.g. [3,7]) and upon other general categorizations of maps with a thematic content (see [8]), among other things, with respect to the comparability with the previous AACH. The aim of this analysis was to assess the typology of maps, particularly in connection with their inclusion in the thematically defined sections of the atlas (see the CHA concept).…”