Having once been on a Grateful Dead southern tour some years ago where I saw them in New Orleans with the Neville Brothers, I can attest to the fact that location had a lot to do with these shows. It meant being on the road, following a band, seeing as one gets closer to the venue the rest of the dancing crew in their makeshift vehicles, coloured clothing and positive attitude appearing on the highways, and observing 250 000 people converge to massive stadium parking lots and set up urban camps, markets and food stalls selling beads, bangles, samosas along with the odd beverage. Tours were part of a roaming community exploring the US's nooks and crannies and being engaged in what deadheads called global dancing acupuncture. But I digress!
So it was a pleasure to see that one can explore the archival records via a map (
http://www.gdao.org/shows) and revisit the locals of the shows. Clicking on one of the points takes users to the location, where they can access archival records related to it and they get pointed to nearby venues. Zooming in also shows the unique shape and form of stadiums on the landscape. I wonder if there is a better database of US stadiums?
At the Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre, researchers are engaged in something called geo-transcribing (Pyne & Taylor). Geo-transcribing involves adding location to documents such as old surveyor notebooks, explorer diaries, aboriginal stories, treaty related documents and so on by mapping the places and locations mentioned in these documents, then making those texts or diary entries along with other related media such as photos, audio-visuals available from the mapped location. It is bringing the archive to the map, and then creating a kind of mapped record of records that get re-purposed in schools and within aboriginal communities. Imagine if archival material were georeferenced and the possibility of searching its records via maps and the stories that could be told when finding related records in space.
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Tracey P. Lauriault
613-234-2805
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