How to Georeference¶

The general process of Georeferencing an image can be broken down into three steps: 1. Select an image to georeference 2. Figure out where the image is located 3. Submit the georeference

Select an image to georeference¶

The easiest way to start georeferencing an image is to click Contribute on the Yesterdays home page. This will select a random photo from the collection that has not yet been georeferenced. By default, this will only select images that have been tagged as Easy or Medium difficulty, but you can choose to include others with the Difficulty selector at the top of the page.

Alternatively, you can click Browse Sources on the home page to view the various Sources of images that have been gathered on Yesterdays so far. At this point, you can click Georeference to dive right into a random picture from a Source.

You can go deeper still, within a Source by clicking Browse again and choosing from any of the Collections available within that source. For example, The Valentine is a Source that currently contains 20 different Collections, each of which could be chosen as a specific georeferencing limit. You could select the Cook Photograph Collection and then click Start Georeferencing to limit your possible photos to only those that are part of the Cook Collection.

Figure out where the image is located¶

This is the most straightforward step, in theory. Just figure out where the picture was taken! Sometimes this will be very easy but other times it will take a bit more work. Thankfully, we have a few tools at our disposal that can help with your research.

The first clues to use are the title and description of the image. Some of them will get you at least in the general vicinity of where the picture was taken, while others will tell you exactly what you're looking at. Still others may have very little, if any information to go off of.

Sometimes other images within the same Source or Collection will provide some helpful context to understand where the image was taken. Knowing that this picture was taken on the 1300 block of E Cary gets you within a stone's throw, but seeing this other picture from the same Collection makes clear exactly where the former picture was taken.

Another tool available to verify that you've got the right location is all of the work that's been done on Yesterdays so far! It's a lot easier to verify that the church in this picture is the same one in the background of this picture than it would be to go looking for that church today, because it doesn't exist anymore. When you're georeferencing an image, there's an option on the map to click Advanced which then allows you to turn Context Images on (Clickable with popups). This allows you to click any dot in the map and see the view and date of all the images that have already been placed. This contemporaneous context can sometimes be invaluable in locating the specific street corner or building you're looking at.

Obviously there are non-Yesterdays sources of information as well. The Resources page on the MapRVA website has a host of other sources of information that can help you find your specific location.

Submit the georeference¶

The final step is actually broken into a few smaller steps: 1. Place the dot on the map where you've decided the picture was taken. 2. Drag the black dot/joystick around so that the angle of the picture is represented by the angle of the truncated cone on the map. 3. Choose a confidence level 4. Add any additional information to justify the placement of this image. Of note, if you want to reference another image in your Additional Notes, you can do so by simply preceding the other image's ID with a # symbol. You can see an example in the comments of this photo. 5. Hit Submit!