We've been talking about having a GIS student create some historical world boundary shapefiles.  They don't seem to exist as shapefiles, only as a web service.  If we develop some, we could host the shapefiles on our ArcOnline site, or we could host it on the Big Ten Academic Alliance ArcOnline site (or both).

French West Africa is an area of interest to us, something to consider.  If your student does end up making one before we get around to it, please encourage her to share it!  We will host it permanently and of course plaster her name all over the metadata!

One question we ran into right away is, whose version of boundaries do you follow?  For world post-1945 we'll probably use United Nations maps as reference.  For French West Africa it makes sense to use IGN, an easier decision.

Kathleen Weessies
Social Sciences Coordinator; Head, Map Library
Michigan State University
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517-884-0849

From: Maps-L: Map Librarians, etc. <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Eliza Bettinger
Sent: Tuesday, April 2, 2019 8:09 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Historical French colonial boundaries in Africa


Hello All,



This is a long shot, but I'm wondering if any of you have a lead on GIS data containing boundaries of colonial French West Africa down to the cercle (political administration subunit) level. My patron (a grad student) is looking for data from about 1925.



My guess is that her only hope will be to trace a historic map image, but wanted to reach out to see if there's anyone out there will boundaries already created that they're willing to share.



All the best,

Eliza



--

Eliza Bettinger

Digital Humanities Librarian

Research and Learning Services

106 Olin Library

Cornell University

Ithaca NY 14853 USA

607-255-4042 (office)