Atlas: "One who supports or sustains a great burden; a chief supporter, a mainstay." Also: "A collection of maps in a volume. [This use of the word is said to be derived from a representation of Atlas [by Titian] supporting the heavens placed as a frontispiece to early works of this kind, and to have been first used by Mercator in the 16th c.]."

1. Contact Information for Nicols and Mohr at the University of Oregon:
   1. John Nicols: nic@darkwing.uoregon.edu
   2. James Mohr: jmohr@darkwing.uoregon.edu
2. Fundamental Concepts of the Project
   
   1. It is easy to think of this project as "technological"; but, while it is true that we will use programmers, the real work is historical --defining a problem that lends itself to visual and dynamic representations
   2. Tho we focus on "die Studierende", the concepts lend themselves well to the representation of higher end research problems
   3. History as process; the study of change; not simply before and after, continuous tho variable. We traditionally use words to describe, but we also know that the ancients made use of maps: Herodotus (5.48) mentions a chalkeon pinaka that Aristagoras exhibited to Cleomenes in Sparta, perhaps based on the still older map of Anaximander of Miletus; see also Howe&Wells on this point), Agrippa among others displayed a wall map of the Roman Empire in the Rome of Augustus
   4. Maps as summaries of information, as abstractions; hard to imagine writing history without the use of a map
   5. Not all historical concepts lend themselves to graphic representation. Political change, military activities are obvious candidates, but one can also illustrate changes in the formal expression of religion, social and economic development, changes in urbanization patterns and some cultural phenomena
   6. Maps have limitations; one must make compromises, decide what points needs emphasis and eliminate the nonessential: Traditional maps ...
      1. often represent (as Talbert knows from the reviews of the Barrington Atlas) a conflation of sometimes anachronistic items.
      2. they are static, rather than dynamic; use changes in color, addition of dates, etc. to suggest differences / change
      3. even those that are dynamic, such a simple representations of Alexander's conquest of Asia, tho intuitively more interesting in representing relative intervals of time (just putting the dates next to the his civic foundations does not work that well); fail to exploit the possibilities inherent in the new media.
   7. The advantages of a dynamic representation, but also the possibility to bring into the display other sets of data and to do so without too much clutter. Allow for meaningful comparisons; to locate discrete events, and then combine them into a coherent whole. Some examples:
      1. Migrations in late antiquity
      2. Imperialism in 19th cent.
      3. Cotton and slavery [user "histfac"; password "memory"]
      4. Civil War/Gettysburg [user "histfac"; password "memory"]
   8. Evolution of our own ideas, development of software allows more options (e.g. use Flash to zoom for detail). Fundamentally a new way of looking at events; requires some imagination
3. Development: Cannot emphasize too much the importance of identifying a problem that lends itself to this kind of representation; also: we have engaged graphic artists and programers to handle the technical material. What we need is a good manuscript, but also one that will follow the already developed template outlined below. Otherwise we will lose control of costs. Even so, one has considerable room to allow historical imagination to play out.
   1. Collection of maps and data. Collect photocopies of maps / charts to be used to construct the module. These should be marked up (with "farbstiften"), scanned and then placed in a folder named after the module number, as EU01 (=Romanization west). Members of the work group should have access, but no others, hence the folder will have to be password protected. You may end up collecting more maps than are in the end needed, but having all available is sometimes very useful.
   2. Template --we because the costs of programming are significant, we must work within a given scheme.
      1. blank template
      2. completed ms.
   3. Preparation of manuscript.
      1. Publication in both English and in German. Note however that label in the maps will generally be in English; it would be too costly to have the artist apply two label. Hence, Muenster, but Germany, not Deutschland.
      2. I will translate the mss. for the developer, but only after careful review and approval from participants.
   4. Identify the problem/issue. For the next year we need not do more than four, and then engage involvement of other colleagues.
      1. Polis: city foundations, natural resources, Punic competition, division of the Mediterranean
      2. Romanization: conquest & pacification; urban development; armies and defense, patria of authors, patria of emperors; languages.
      3. Cold War Europe
      4. Peasant rebellions in the Early Modern Period
      5. Reformation and counter-reformation
      6. others??
      Ms. then to Nicols for translation and editing, then to the graphic artist. The artist will contact the author by email about any questions
   5. After approval, the "frames" are assembled in both German and English versions are posted on the Oregon "Darkwing" site and on the Muenster site (?? server??).
4. To see more maps we have done earlier, maps done with a much more limited technology, go to the Darkwing-Atlas site.