The research-analytic part of preparation of a cartographic work :a case study of an analysis of historical atlases as the basis for creating the Czech Historical Atlas

Abstract

A new large historical atlas on the Czech and Czechoslovak history of the 20th century is currently being prepared under the project of the Czech Historical Atlas. In this article, the authors introduce the basic research-analytic part of preparation of this cartographic work. It is based on the extensive research and subsequent analysis of the already published and similarly focused Czech (Czecho-slovak) and foreign historical atlases, which gave the team sources of inspiration for processing the concept of the new atlas. The choice, the subsequent description and the analysis were achieved by the application of predetermined criteria. The result is a large database of selected historical atlases produced in the whole world after 1950, which contains more than 400 items. In addition to the standard bibliographic description, it contains a series of further characteristics (methods of thematic cartography, applied scale series, etc.) and references to the excerpts. The authors have decided to make the database freely available on a web portal, because they assume that it can be broadly used for research leading to development in the area of atlas cartography.