Geographia Technica, Vol 19, Issue 2, 2024, pp. 164-174
CHOLNOKY MAP COLLECTION’S WEB SERVICES WITH ONLINE CATALOGUE AND SEARCH ON INTERACTIVE MAP
Zsombor BARTOS-ELEKES 
, Zsolt MAGYARI-SÁSKA
ABSTRACT: The library of the Institute of Geography at the university of Cluj / Kolozsvár, including cartographic materials, was founded in 1884. The maps and atlases of the library were hided around 1950. The remains, found in 2001, are the core of the Cholnoky Map Collection, one of the most important collections of old maps in Romania, with more than 6,600 items (map sheets, atlases), the earliest dating from the 17th century, including valuable manuscripts. Digitization is the key to the survival of this long-suffering collection, so it has always tried to be a pioneer in digitization and dissemination. The topic of this paper is the digitization and visualization of the cartographic heritage: how to realize a digital catalogue and online dissemination of a map collection. With this paper, the authors report on the approaches they applied: they realized the automatic update of the website from the online catalogue, and based on this database, a web search of the maps by their metadata and by their bounding coordinates. The paper presents the map collection: its history, its structure and the features of its previous website (https://hagyatek.cholnoky.ro/terkeptar). It provides an overview of the websites and online map-based search engines of major map libraries in the neighborhood and around the world. It describes how was completed the catalogue with geolocation data; how the back-end IT system enables the automatic updates of online content based on the continuously upgraded catalogue. The front-end interface, the new webpage (http://cholnokymaps.gis-it.ro/) allows users to search for maps by text matching in metadata, and to obtain the corresponding results depending on the actual map bounding box of the OpenStreetMap (OSM). The selected map is visualized using magnifier and panning tools and can be downloaded in high-resolution.
Keywords: cartographic heritage, visualization, automated data update, geolocation, Jenő Cholnoky, Cluj-Napoca
Full article here