Author: Valentina Bartalesi (CNR, Italy)
Editor: Miranda García (AEIDL)
Maps have a key role in describing a territory, but not only. Maps have always geographically supported storytelling and stimulated people’s imagination. Stories based on maps can be found from narratives and newspapers to historical literature. Maps, alone, represent the spatio-temporal structure of a story, such as the geography of a territory and the relationships between places, but maps should be enriched with oral/written events or digital audio/video material to describe the overall territorial complexity.
MOVING partners from the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) have developed an online tool – the Story Map Building and Visualizing Tool (SMBVT) – that allows users to create story maps within a collaborative environment and a usable web interface. Using this tool, CNR has created story maps for the 23 MOVING reference regions in a semi-automatic way. Regional experts have contributed to these story maps by reviewing them to correct possible inaccuracies.
What are story maps?
Story maps are computer science realizations of narratives based on maps. They are online interactive maps enriched with text, pictures, videos, data, and other multimedia information, aiming to tell a story over a territory. Story maps are largely used to effectively transmit the message of a narrative through many digital devices (e.g., PCs, tablets, smartphones, and interactive displays). Story maps face a perceptive cartographic challenge by enriching the maps with multimedia data to increase the overall perception of the territory beyond the map. Thus, story maps can help fill this gap by linking spatiotemporal events to emotions, perceptions, and historical context.
How does it work the Story Map Building and Visualizing Tool created by CNR?
This online tool is entirely open-source and published as a free-to-use solution. It builds a user-shared semantic knowledge base that automatically interconnects all stories and seamlessly enables collaborative story building. Moreover, it operates within an Open-Science oriented e-Infrastructure (D4Science), which allows data and information sharing within communities of narrators.
What do MOVING story maps are about?
The MOVING story maps are about the mountain value chains from the 23 MOVING reference regions. These territories represent the wide diversity of mountain areas in Europe and neighbouring countries. For example, CNR has created story maps to describe and valorise the Sierra Morena – Iberian ham (Spain) value chain, Northern Apennines – Chestnut Flour (Italy) value chain or the Sheep Farmers from the Region of Weiz (Austria) value chain.
Find out the 23 story maps on the MOVING website!