Online Maps with Apis and Webservices ed. by Michael P. Peterson (review)

Although the importance of maps has never disappeared, the importance of cartography has experienced a renaissance in recent years with the success of Internet mapping technology. Changing technologies have always had a considerable impact on cartography, and they continue to do so in the digital world, opening cartographic practice up to a new group of professionals who sometimes have little in common with old-school cartographers and their skills and craftsmanship. The term neocartography gives credit to the most recent trends in the map-making field and describes the new cartography in the online world, along with the new skills and methods that are associated with it.

Online Maps with APIs and Webservices, edited by Michael P. Peterson and published in the Lecture Notes in Geo-information and Cartography series, has a far less specialized technical focus than its title suggests. It links the core of what neocartography aims to describe – the presentation of maps in an online environment – with the very specific needs and requirements of cartographers, which often build on but even more frequently extend methodological requirements from their analogue equivalents in the print world.

This volume encompasses a broad range of contributions looking at various aspects of map presentation in online environments, also described as map delivery. The rather technical reference to APIs (application programmer interfaces) relates to one of the central methods used when maps are to be presented online in more than just static form, while also benefitting from already existing mapping environments. APIs are the vital link between custom-made cartographic content and online map services, which explains the existence of a large (and still growing) number of technically oriented publications in this field.

This book differs in focus from many other publications in the area. It presents and discusses a range of different current approaches to online mapping, with a broad range of examples by authors from the worlds of cartography and/or the geosciences. The contributions are very practical and applied in approach, which makes this book much less dry than other, more technically oriented publications.

The arrangement of the chapters into the book’s four parts may appear somewhat random, and is not always as structured as the part titles suggest. This makes the content of the individual chapters no less attractive, however. It is in the nature of the topic that the different areas discussed in the book are closely related and contain different foci.

The broadest angle on Web mapping is taken in Part 1, which includes a concise overview of recent trends in Web mapping services by Schmidt and Weiser that sets out why the contributions in this book matter and where they fit in the development of online cartography.

Part 2, on API mashups, will be of most interest to readers looking for a comprehensive overview of fundamental ways to work with APIs. Hu goes beyond the most usual use of APIs from commercial mapping services as simple mashup by using their APIs in combination with those of other multimedia services such as YouTube and Flickr in order to optimize interaction and multimedia presentation. Strode discusses more specific uses of APIs, as deployed by the widely used ArcGIS; Mac Gillavry et al. outline the remarkable efforts involved in developing a Dutch mapping API.

Part 3, titled “Symbolization,” looks at a wider range of more conceptual reflections on how online mapping services can provide added value relative to their static printed equivalents. APIs that connect to some form of existing map service do not always embrace the full capabilities of digital platforms for map delivery. The range of ideas presented in Part 3, such as a focus on online globes explained by Gede, represents only a small snapshot of ideas in this field. But the selection of topics covered is interesting and relevant.

The book concludes with a section on applications for...