Multimedia Cartography

Multimedia Cartography evolved from a need to present geographical information in an intuitive manner. Multimedia Cartography is best defined through the metaphor of the world atlas, that revered assemblage of maps in book form that has introduced people to the world for centuries. What multimedia offers is the ability to create a different map. By different map, what is meant is not merely something that is an ‘electronic page turner’, but a product which really extends the technology and allows for a different way of presenting geographic information to change geographical information access. A multimedia-based mapping product is seen as a real alternative to conventional mapping (including those maps now being produced electronically). Most electronically-produced are still not really that different from the maps produced when the printing press harnessed cartographers to think in terms of page sizes, print-derived specifications and products which had to be technically correct the very first time they came off the press.

Multimedia is intended to expand the channels of information available to the user. Users should then be able to thread their way through a database query in ways not anticipated by the system designers. Multimedia is an accessible tool, both practically and economically, even though it has been ‘hijacked’ by the 'glossy' nature of many multimedia products. But, if multimedia is viewed as multi-media, then its potential in the application of access and display interfaces to geographical information in a variety of ways can be seen. Multimedia offers a different way to view data that has been generated and stored by the many existing spatial resources packages.

References

* Cartwright, W. E., Peterson, M. P. and Gartner, G.(eds), 1999, Multimedia Cartography, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag.