LogoLogo
  • About
  • Digital Scholarship
    • DS Methods Overview
      • ¶ Data Visualization
        • Basic Charts
        • Timeline
        • Treemap
        • Network
      • ¶ Mapping
        • GIS
        • Story Maps
        • Maps as Interface
      • ¶ 3D & Immersive Technologies
        • Augmented Reality & Virtual Reality
        • 3D Modeling & Laser Scanning
        • Immersive Games
        • 360 Degree Capturing
      • ¶ Digital Exhibits
        • Example Exhibits
      • ¶ Hypertext
        • Publishing & Presenting
        • Multimedia
        • Narratives & Games
      • ¶ Textual Encoding Initiative
        • What Does TEI Markup Look Like?
        • Facsimiles & Critical Editions
      • ¶ Text Analysis
        • Out of the Box vs Coding and Scripting
        • Text Analysis Examples
    • Introduction to Data
      • ¶ What is Data?
        • Structured & Unstructured Data
        • Quantitative & Qualitative Data
        • Humanities & Data
      • ¶ What is Data Visualization?
      • ¶ DS Data Projects
        • Getting Started Questions
        • Project Examples
        • Visualization Tools
      • ¶ Research Data Lifecycle
        • Data Management Best Practices
      • ¶ Glossary
    • Introduction to Mapping
      • ¶ What is Spatial Data?
      • ¶ Vector and Raster Data
        • Vector and Raster Data Examples
        • File Format Examples
      • ¶ Starting a Mapping Project
        • Getting Started Questions
        • Project Examples
        • Mapping Tools and Platforms
    • Introduction to Digital Exhibits
      • ¶ What is a Digital Exhibit?
        • Related Concepts
      • ¶ Starting a Digital Exhibit
      • ¶ Exhibit Examples
      • ¶ Platforms
  • Digital Pedagogy
    • ¶ What is Digital Pedagogy?
    • ¶ Considerations
    • ¶ Recommendations
    • ¶ Assignment Design
      • Learning Outcomes
      • Mode/Method/Tool Process
      • Assignment Examples
    • ¶ Evaluation
      • Assignment Criteria
    • ¶ Maintenance & Archiving
      • Recommended File Formats
  • Accessibility
  • Skills
  • Tools
Powered by GitBook
On this page
  • Knight Lab StoryMapsJS
  • ArcGIS Online/ArcGIS Online Story Map
  • Google Earth (Cloud and Desktop)
  • Tableau Mapping
  • ArcGIS (Pro and Desktop) and QGIS
  • Leaflet
Export as PDF
  1. Digital Scholarship
  2. Introduction to Mapping
  3. ¶ Starting a Mapping Project

Mapping Tools and Platforms

PreviousProject ExamplesNextIntroduction to Digital Exhibits

Last updated 3 years ago

Depending on your goals, there are a wide variety of pre-built platforms that are useful for visualizing, analyzing, and telling stories about spatial data. Below are some common platforms, starting with ones with the generally lowest level learning curve and moving to the highest.

Knight Lab StoryMapsJS

StoryMapJS, a free online tool developed by Northwestern University's Knight Lab, allows creators to combine spatial information with multimedia and textual data to tell location based narratives. Its simple user interface and ability to use both standard and customized underlays make it a good platform for simple story-mapping projects. Its limitations include the fact that it cannot be hosted locally and little customization in terms of styling or functionality is possible. Spatial data points must also be inserted individually either on a map or through long/lat coordinates, making work with large datasets difficult.

Main use: Storytelling, Access: Free, requires a Google account

seen below combines text, video, and images to highlight how Chicago's dialogue with classical antiquity has shaped the city's look, reputation, and identity.

ArcGIS Online/ArcGIS Online Story Map

Google Earth (Cloud and Desktop)

Main Use: Storytelling, Simple Visualization, Access: Free, requires a Google account

Tableau Mapping

With Tableau, you can create the following common map types:

ArcGIS (Pro and Desktop) and QGIS

Leaflet

is ESRI's free online data visualization tool and can be integrated directly with ArcGIS Desktop or Pro. It is possible to create a free personal account or to join the Boston College account system by contacting .

While ArcGIS Online can be useful for making simple interactive maps, where it really shines is in its storymapping functionality. Like Knight Lab StoryMapJS, allow you to create inspiring, immersive stories and tours by combining text, interactive maps, and other multimedia content. ArcGIS Online, however, is a much more flexible platform, allowing creators to present their data in a wider variety of formats and utilize a wider variety of map types. Its learning curve is steeper than Knight Lab's StoryMaps and it requires the user to have a greater understanding of how they want to organize and share their spatial data.

Main Use: Storytelling, Data Visualization, Access: Free version available, also available to BC faculty, staff, and students

from BC student Wenwei Su won the 2020 Boston College Libraries GIS Contest (digital division) for looking at health care expenditures and mortality rates in the US through the lens of the movie "Dying to Survive." (For more examples, check out the .)

The free tool (available for use online or for download to mobile and desktop) is a common tool for creating simple maps with points, lines, and polygons to share with others. The program maps the Earth by superimposing satellite images, aerial photography, and GIS data onto a 3D globe, allowing users to see cities and landscapes from various angles.

The new allow you to create a "story map" experience by adding items such as images and videos into location descriptions. It is possible to share your creation in the cloud (through standard google sharing methods) or download your spatial data as a .kml file to open on a variety of platforms.

The uses historical photographs, artwork, Google street views, and satellite imagery to tell the story of Henry Box Brown, an enslaved person who shipped himself from Virginia to Pennsylvania to obtain his freedom.

is a data visualization and analytics platform that enables users to connect to a variety of data sources and explore the data in a simplified way. The drag and drop interface makes it very easy to visualize and create interactive dashboards without any programming skills. The mapping features of Tableau Desktop give users the ability to get the answers to spatial questions. Tableau's spatial file connector allows you to easily connect to and join Esri Shapefiles, KML, MapInfo tables, GeoJSON files, and other forms of geospatial data. You can also import geographic data from R or GIS (or whatever or you have) and make it more easily accessible, interactive, and shareable. Census-based population, income, and other standard demographic datasets are built-in.

Main Use: Data Visualization, Access: is a free version available to the general public, a free version of can be acquired by academic faculty, staff, and students (see )

The example map below from the project, , shows the foreign-born population around the Boston area community from 1870 to 2010.

ArcGIS and QGIS are the two most common platforms for organizing your data into a true database and for analyzing data using common spatial methodologies. As such, they are often the go-to for someone wanting to move beyond an Excel or Google Sheet file for recording their datasets. The two platforms are similar, though only runs on Windows computers while is a free and open source GIS platform that runs on Windows and Macs. While both platforms can be used for sharing visualizations as exports in traditional file formats such as .jpg and .tiff (commonly used in publications), sharing interactive online visualizations requires integration with a secondary platform like ArcGIS Online or Leaflet.

Boston College has an ArcGIS campus license for students, faculty, and staff, so please see the for more information on how to get a license for your computer. Both platforms are available for use in the . If you just want to start from the basics in ArcGIS or QGIS, we recommend running through a few of the beginner tutorials from the or the .

Main use: Spatial Organization, Spatial Analysis, Spatial Visualization, Access: are available to BC faculty, staff, and students; QGIS is free and open source, download from

is an open-source JavaScript library for interactive web maps. It is lightweight and flexible and is probably the most popular open-source mapping library at the moment. Of the web mapping platforms discussed here, it is certainly the most powerful, but at the same time is the least user friendly, as a knowledge of coding in javascript is required. Many types of functionalities may be performed more easily using the other platforms described above, yet Leaflet (especially with its many plugins) is by far the most customizable.

Main use: Data Visualization, Access: Free and open source, download from

The example map below is an Leaflet based map from the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies (IAJS) Jesuit Online Necrology Project, which the lives of more than 33000 members of the Jesuit Priesthood. The map shows the myriad of locations mentioned in the necrology, allowing the user to search by location and identify the Jesuits associated with a location.

ArcGIS Online
Research Services
ArcGIS StoryMaps
license version
This example ArcGIS StoryMap
ArcGIS online StoryMap gallery
Google Earth Pro
GoogleEarth Creation tools
example project seen below
Tableau
other spatial files
custom geocode data
Proportional symbol maps
Choropleth maps (filled maps)
Point distribution maps
Heatmaps (density maps)
Flow maps (path maps)
Spider maps (origin-destination maps)
Tableau Public
Tableau Desktop
instructions
Immigrant Settlement in Greater Boston
ArcGIS
QGIS
BC Services ArcGIS page
Digital Studio
LearnArcGIS Hub
QGIS tutorials page
ArcGIS licenses
QGIS
Leaflet
Leaflet
interactive
The example project
Example Knightlab project from Northwestern University
Free Shipping: How Henry Box Brown Shipped Himself to Freedom, a Google Earth Interactive Map
Example: Foreign-born Population in Boston Area Communities
Example Output: ArcGIS map by Zoe Fanning, 2019 first place winner of the BC Libraries ArcGIS contest.
Example Output: Jesuit Online Necrology Places Search