Behind the Scenes — About the Project
Initiated in 2014, the Copper Country Historical Spatial Data Infrastructure (CC-HSDI) project is an online deep map that enables interpretations of past lives and environments by connecting the public with researchers and inviting them to recreate the past in time and space. Our project extends these meaningful linkages to the present day through a public engagement initiative known as the Keweenaw Time Traveler (KeTT). KeTT recruits citizen historians to help design the interface, build the deep map, and contribute their own spatial stories relating to the project area. As the first data-rich publicly-engaged deep map, the CC-HSDI is pioneering techniques and best-practices for colleagues in the digital spatial humanities, a broad umbrella that includes experts in the fields of geography, history, humanities, computer sciences, historical demography, anthropology, sociology, and more.
Our project focus area, the Copper Country on Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula, is a singular and nationally recognized example of the lasting sociocultural and environmental effects of the deep interaction between humans and the natural world. Endorsed by the creation of the Keweenaw National Historical Park in 1992, the Copper Country is the oldest and one of the largest copper mining regions in the United States. The importance of the rich historical and geographic archives, paired with our active heritage community, and an interdisciplinary group of professionals, make the Copper Country an ideal place to advance this cutting-edge participatory humanities research.
Our project focus area, the Copper Country on Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula, is a singular and nationally recognized example of the lasting sociocultural and environmental effects of the deep interaction between humans and the natural world. Endorsed by the creation of the Keweenaw National Historical Park in 1992, the Copper Country is the oldest and one of the largest copper mining regions in the United States. The importance of the rich historical and geographic archives, paired with our active heritage community, and an interdisciplinary group of professionals, make the Copper Country an ideal place to advance this cutting-edge participatory humanities research.
What is a 'Historical Spatial Data Infrastructure' (HSDI)?
Our project has expanded the utility of Historical GIS (HGIS) research to the spatial humanities through the development of the historical spatial data infrastructure (HSDI). Since 2014, we have built a high-precision big data infrastructure that:
Our CC-HSDI leverages the tenets of contemporary spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) by giving important attention to questions of scale, accuracy, system development, compatibility, and, most importantly, expandability and public accessibility. It is a big-data HSDI for humanities and social science scholarship with over 19.7 million variables in total (and growing!). This includes 1.9 million variables on some 116,000 buildings and over 17 million variables on over 500,000 records on individuals and families, all across 70 years from 1880-1950. All buildings have been modeled in 3D (Arnold and Lafreniere 2018).
- contextualizes map features and spatial narratives within their historically accurate space and time;
- allows for the rapid mapping of nearly any document in a digital archive;
- is scalable and expandable to include future archival sources, research questions, and tools for spatial analysis and public accessibility.
Our CC-HSDI leverages the tenets of contemporary spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) by giving important attention to questions of scale, accuracy, system development, compatibility, and, most importantly, expandability and public accessibility. It is a big-data HSDI for humanities and social science scholarship with over 19.7 million variables in total (and growing!). This includes 1.9 million variables on some 116,000 buildings and over 17 million variables on over 500,000 records on individuals and families, all across 70 years from 1880-1950. All buildings have been modeled in 3D (Arnold and Lafreniere 2018).
Overview of how we built the Copper Country HSDI
Below is a brief overview of the major steps needed in building an HSDI. For greater detail see the papers listed at the end of this section or visit our publications page. You can also watch a video of the "Researcher Re-Launch" webinar from June 2022 in which we describe and illustrate these steps.
The first step in creating the digital infrastructure of the CC-HSDI involved digitizing and spatializing over a century’s worth of historical cartography covering the project area. This process is more complex than it sounds, since the hand-drawn maps available were created in different sizes with differing levels of spatial precision. In addition, the maps had to be stretched across earth’s surface, a process called georeferencing, so that they could be layered upon one another through different years. The result was a set of over 1,100 maps spanning across the Copper Country and through time.
In order to connect data to historic spaces, however, the information recorded on the maps had to be transcribed. Researchers at MTU, community members, and local high school students contributed to this process by tracing the outlines of buildings and recording information such as the street number and building material; the resulting dataset contained over 116,000 building footprints and 1.9 million variables related to the physical environment. This step also connected the same building through time, allowing individuals to see how properties changed over 60 years!
These transcribed building footprints provide the foundation to connect other types of records to homes and businesses on historic maps through a process called geocoding. Most of the datasets utilized in this project are known as microdata, or records collected at the smallest unit possible. In this case, many of the records are at the individual level, such as the federal censuses which provide valuable demographic and economic information about local residents. The Polk City Directories, the telephone book of the day, also provide valuable information about local businesses and those that worked in them. In addition, local school records provide a unique perspective into the lives of local schoolchildren between 1904 and 1926. Together, these datasets contain over 264,000 individual records and over 8 million variables about those individuals. More details on our geocoding process will be available in a new paper soon.
This collection of data and datasets also creates the opportunity for record linkage, or the connection of records from different sources. For example, the federal census provides information about which industry an individual works in, but the city directory may list their specific occupation within that industry. Record linkages create a web of information tied to each individual which helps contextualize data within its original space, time, and social context, contributing to a concept known as “deep mapping.”
These linkages between individuals and through space and time also allow for one of the most distinctive and important parts of this project - public participation. Rather than creating all of this data and simply displaying it, a main goal of the Keweenaw Time Traveler is to be interactive; not only have community members contributed greatly to underlying data creation, as mentioned above, but they also have shared over 800 stories related to the Copper Country through the Time Traveler’s Explore app! These stories vary greatly in their content, but often include details and media of family members who lived and worked during the Copper Country’s heyday.
Building on all of this progress, much remains in the works! Students and researchers continue to transcribe and process new maps and datasets while also using existing ones to study life in this unique place. In addition, with the launch of the new Explore app, community involvement is at an all-time high as the research team continues to seek new and innovative ways to collect and represent citizen histories.
The first step in creating the digital infrastructure of the CC-HSDI involved digitizing and spatializing over a century’s worth of historical cartography covering the project area. This process is more complex than it sounds, since the hand-drawn maps available were created in different sizes with differing levels of spatial precision. In addition, the maps had to be stretched across earth’s surface, a process called georeferencing, so that they could be layered upon one another through different years. The result was a set of over 1,100 maps spanning across the Copper Country and through time.
In order to connect data to historic spaces, however, the information recorded on the maps had to be transcribed. Researchers at MTU, community members, and local high school students contributed to this process by tracing the outlines of buildings and recording information such as the street number and building material; the resulting dataset contained over 116,000 building footprints and 1.9 million variables related to the physical environment. This step also connected the same building through time, allowing individuals to see how properties changed over 60 years!
These transcribed building footprints provide the foundation to connect other types of records to homes and businesses on historic maps through a process called geocoding. Most of the datasets utilized in this project are known as microdata, or records collected at the smallest unit possible. In this case, many of the records are at the individual level, such as the federal censuses which provide valuable demographic and economic information about local residents. The Polk City Directories, the telephone book of the day, also provide valuable information about local businesses and those that worked in them. In addition, local school records provide a unique perspective into the lives of local schoolchildren between 1904 and 1926. Together, these datasets contain over 264,000 individual records and over 8 million variables about those individuals. More details on our geocoding process will be available in a new paper soon.
This collection of data and datasets also creates the opportunity for record linkage, or the connection of records from different sources. For example, the federal census provides information about which industry an individual works in, but the city directory may list their specific occupation within that industry. Record linkages create a web of information tied to each individual which helps contextualize data within its original space, time, and social context, contributing to a concept known as “deep mapping.”
These linkages between individuals and through space and time also allow for one of the most distinctive and important parts of this project - public participation. Rather than creating all of this data and simply displaying it, a main goal of the Keweenaw Time Traveler is to be interactive; not only have community members contributed greatly to underlying data creation, as mentioned above, but they also have shared over 800 stories related to the Copper Country through the Time Traveler’s Explore app! These stories vary greatly in their content, but often include details and media of family members who lived and worked during the Copper Country’s heyday.
Building on all of this progress, much remains in the works! Students and researchers continue to transcribe and process new maps and datasets while also using existing ones to study life in this unique place. In addition, with the launch of the new Explore app, community involvement is at an all-time high as the research team continues to seek new and innovative ways to collect and represent citizen histories.
Project Achievements
The CC-HSDI project has generated numerous products since its inception, including over a dozen peer-reviewed publications and counting. The published products include the use of the CC-HSDI as an advanced public-participatory GIS (PPGIS) (Lafreniere et al. 2019), discussions of the application of our HSDI model to historical and digital archaeology (Trepal, Lafreniere, and Gilliland 2020; Trepal, Lafreniere, and Stone 2021), Applications of the Keweenaw Time Traveler as a tool for heritage interpretation and preservation (Arnold and Lafreniere 2017; Scarlett et al. 2018; Trepal, Scarlett, and Lafreniere 2019), and the use of our HSDI in reconstructing the spread of the historical 1918 influenza pandemic in our project area (Lafreniere et al. 2021). Additional themes being researched using the CC-HSDI include industrial development, deindustrialization, migration, labor, environmental change, social mobility, and health and well-being. Our research team have presented on the project at many academic conferences including the meetings of the American Association of Geographers, Social Science History Association, European Social Science History Conference, The Society for Historical Archaeology, European Society of Historical Demographers, Canadian Association of Geographers, Midwest Historical Archaeology Conference, National Council on Public History, Vernacular Architecture Forum, Citizen Science Association, and the Society for the History of Children and Youth.
The CC-HSDI project has also served as an academic incubator for many young scholars, with our research funding supporting paid positions for over 45 undergraduate student researchers to learn GIS, geography, spatial humanities, and public history. The project has supported numerous undergraduate senior theses and research projects, 3 Masters’ theses, and 2 Doctoral dissertations to date with several others in the works.
The public-facing portion of the project has reached a wide public audience through a blend of in-person and virtual events, presentations, workshops and demonstration. Since its public launch in June 2017, the project website received visits from over 48,000 unique users, with visitors making over 310,000 queries using the data exploration tools. Citizen historians have classified and transcribed nearly 320,000 building features and added over 1000 of their own place-based stories about family members, historic newspaper articles, and favorite places (Lafreniere et. al. 2019). The project team of faculty and students have introduced KeTT to over 1500 people at festivals or events at our heritage partners using touchscreen kiosks and tablets. Faculty have worked with local governments on spatial history service learning projects demonstrating the CC-HSDI’s potential to create immersive experiences (Scarlett et. al. 2019). Project team members have participated in more than 25 radio, newspaper, and TV interviews discussing the project, and the project website features an active blog with articles highlighting the historical datasets available, features of the web interface, and posts showcasing the work of project team members. Our ongoing partnership with the Keweenaw National Historical Park, whose “partnership park” model connects the KeTT with heritage partner organizations and their members throughout the greater region, brings national reach to this public spatial humanities project.
The CC-HSDI project has also served as an academic incubator for many young scholars, with our research funding supporting paid positions for over 45 undergraduate student researchers to learn GIS, geography, spatial humanities, and public history. The project has supported numerous undergraduate senior theses and research projects, 3 Masters’ theses, and 2 Doctoral dissertations to date with several others in the works.
The public-facing portion of the project has reached a wide public audience through a blend of in-person and virtual events, presentations, workshops and demonstration. Since its public launch in June 2017, the project website received visits from over 48,000 unique users, with visitors making over 310,000 queries using the data exploration tools. Citizen historians have classified and transcribed nearly 320,000 building features and added over 1000 of their own place-based stories about family members, historic newspaper articles, and favorite places (Lafreniere et. al. 2019). The project team of faculty and students have introduced KeTT to over 1500 people at festivals or events at our heritage partners using touchscreen kiosks and tablets. Faculty have worked with local governments on spatial history service learning projects demonstrating the CC-HSDI’s potential to create immersive experiences (Scarlett et. al. 2019). Project team members have participated in more than 25 radio, newspaper, and TV interviews discussing the project, and the project website features an active blog with articles highlighting the historical datasets available, features of the web interface, and posts showcasing the work of project team members. Our ongoing partnership with the Keweenaw National Historical Park, whose “partnership park” model connects the KeTT with heritage partner organizations and their members throughout the greater region, brings national reach to this public spatial humanities project.
Data Sharing
The data created during work on the Copper Country Historical Spatial Data Infrastructure and Keweenaw Time Traveler will be available soon on GitHub and through the Historical Environment Spatial Analytics Lab.