I use chrome and Bounding box sort of works for a while and then begins to fail. It seems like there aren't as many place names discoverable via the search bar. As Caroline said, one can still use the tool to navigate to the place and draw the box yourself.

One of the nice features before was the place name dictionary/gazetteer. You could search for almost any place and it would take you exactly there. I imagine it was pulling from the GNIS or some other gazetteer. The coordinates that were provided were the "approved," exact coordinates.

For people creating authorities in OCLC, those coordinates are necessary. Now we're back to talking about GNIS. The domestic search brings up cleanly displayed coordinates. The foreign search does not.

Angie
________________________________
From: Maps-L: Map Librarians, etc. <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Keizer, Caroline <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, February 24, 2023 8:56 AM
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: [MAPS-L] Klokantech still inoperable (to a point)


I too was having problems yesterday with Klokantech in that typing in the place name would not take me there. I certainly could still maneuver about and get the coordinates by drawing the box myself.  It is the same today. I have tried it with many browsers to no avail. Sebastian, you must just be in luck!



From: Maps-L: Map Librarians, etc. <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Andrew, Paige G.
Sent: Friday, February 24, 2023 7:33 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Suggestions for an improved Extent Helper tool



Good morning Sebastian,



I use Chrome. My colleague and team mate here uses Firefox. We tried it on Edge yesterday. Was not working on any of those platforms. I will be at work soon and see if it is working at the website, which I also tried yesterday to no avail.



Paige

________________________________

From: Maps-L: Map Librarians, etc. <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> on behalf of Sean de Basti <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
Sent: Friday, February 24, 2023 1:54 AM
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
Subject: Re: Suggestions for an improved Extent Helper tool



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Hi Librarians,



I use the tool from their website https://boundingbox.klokantech.com/<https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fboundingbox.klokantech.com%2F&data=05%7C01%7Cacope%40UWM.EDU%7Cfb541623f6424e0726bf08db16778fd5%7C0bca7ac3fcb64efd89eb6de97603cf21%7C0%7C0%7C638128474995944745%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=WuwNr9bUCUX9ZSkXKuLYkLl1RyAZ3lRdvDqrgnDP6SA%3D&reserved=0> and it is still working. On which platform do you use it?



Kindly regards

Sebastian


On 24.02.23 at 01:03, Andrew, Paige G. wrote:

From: "Andrew, Paige G." <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
Date: 24. February 2023
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Cc:
Subject: Suggestions for an improved Extent Helper tool

I am a long-time user of the Klokan Bounding Box tool and have recommended it to other map catalogers/catalogers for determining bounding box coordinates for our bibllographic records. As many of you know, Klokan's tool has been down all day today (last time I checked was about an hour ago so I might be wrong now), which puts a scare in to me in terms of wondering how stable this tool might be going forward. Naturally, we have a similar tool at our disposal, Extent Helper, which until today I have not used in earnest in some time -- to my own detriment I admit. So, to keep moving things off of my pile of maps of Oregon "regions" (i.e., national forests, national wildernesses, even a map of an old electric company's district boundaries in the Portland, Oregon area) I opened Extent Helper and started refreshing myself on how to use and navigate it. I fully admit that upon first try of about ten minutes I closed it down in frustration and finished editing all other aspects of the record I was working on and then put it in the OCLC online save file to wait for Klokan to return so I could quickly and precisely come up with coordinates for the portion of the Pacific Crest Trail that runs through the state of Oregon.



This afternoon I returned to Extent Helper with a fresh mindset and started over again, with some success. However, I would like to make some suggestions for improvement for those who are the creators of this tool in the hopes that it can be manipulated and used in a bit more friendly manner. I will frankly admit that I am not well-versed in using this tool and therefore likely am both ignorant of some of the ways one can use it or have overlooked an icon or similar to put to good use, so take the following with a grain of salt as needed.



As any Klokan user knows, you put a place name in the search box and it returns either a bounding box of the formal extent of that location, or a point from which you can click on the drawing tool and create a bounding box of whatever size you need around that point. The software returns a bounding box to you and either your work is done then and there if it matches what is shown on the map you are cataloging or can be used as a starting point. The opposite occurs in Extent Helper results, you are given a centerpoint coordinate for the place and then must proceed to draw your own bounding box. Is it possible for Extent Helper to deliver results in the same manner as Klokan?



A second frustration (and again, maybe there is something I am missing here?) is the lack of clarity with the background "streets" basemap, it is unfortunate that the basemap is not planimetric like the "streets" one is in Klokan. Planimetric rather than shaded topographic makes it visually easier to see the street network and any other boundary layer and one can more quickly pick up the locations of populated places large and small. This is pretty imperative when attempting to create a bounding box for a non-jurisdictional region, such as the electric company's districts I mentioned early on -- I could pick up the larger places closest to the edges of the irregularly-shaped districts but even zooming in 2-3 times did not reveal a couple of key small towns or communities that I could have used as a guide. I managed to hone in on a highway and follow it to the map's edge but with great difficulty as the road network is so light in color and appears "washed out" as do even features like names of rivers or mountain peaks. Switching to "satellite image" is not helpful nor to USGS topographic (though, when I was working on a map of Mount Rainier National Park later the USGS topographic basemap was helpful because it shows the Park's boundaries pretty well).



One last frustration to share and ask for a possible change. Due to the little squares on all four sides of a bounding box being fixed in one place one their lines it requires a lot more zooming in and out in order to locate a specific thing such as a town or lake or other point being used as an identifier to determine the edge or near-edge of the map being described. If one grabs instead the line itself after locating at least one boundary that you do not want to move/change you quickly learn that your entire bounding box moves -- and you have to start over again. In Klokan the little bar on all four sides also does not move BUT if you grab inside the bounding box the entire image moves, NOT the bounding box, meaning one is not re-sizing/moving the bounding box itself. I had to learn to zoom in to find an object of interest to key in on, but not touch the bounding box, then zoom back out to find the bar to move the line one way or another. All that zooming in order to not mess up and change the bounding box takes much more time to create the final bounding box that fits the map being described.



Fingers crossed that Klokan is back up and running tomorrow! In the meantime, I will keep practicing with Extent Helper because ultimately we know that an unsupported Klokan might go away in the near future. Oh...and I will be contacting LC to see if maybe they can change the existing nonsense source code of "ngmdbeh" to something akin to Klokan's "bound" like how about "extent"???



Paige