Hi, folks! We wanted to share our latest mapping work, hoping it might help our peer institutions.
When COVID first hit, we were tasked with creating a digital alternative to paper maps that would help visitors wayfind on their personal cell phones. Several months later, the project is in a usable state and we've open-sourced the code so other institutions can benefit. You can see the online example of our map <https://map.fieldmuseum.org/> or point your developers to the project on Github <https://github.com/arcataroger/openlayers_indoor_map>. You're free to use and modify this as you see fit. Please note that we will not be able to provide much support, due to limited resources. Visitor features include: - Usable on both desktop and mobile devices - Clickable points of interest with a popup description & picture - Variable levels of detail based on zoom & importance - Permalinks for floors & points of interest - COVID one-way flows (also useful for one-way exhibitions) - Relatively lightweight and fast, with additional assets lazy-loaded in the background Staff/editor/developer features: - Doesn't require any proprietary/paid software or service, just staff time. Can be created and launched with $0. - Integration with a headless CMS so editors can make changes (text, images, colors, etc.) without any coding - Created with geospatial standards in mind for broad compatibility with other web mapping platforms (geoJSON) - Thorough readme and detailed comments in the (messy, sorry) code This project was built over several months after an exhaustive look at the commercial marketplace. Although many commercial indoor mapping solutions exist (Here.com <https://venues.here.com/products/maps-sdk>, MazeMap <https://www.mazemap.com/>, IndoorAtlas <https://www.indooratlas.com/>, MapsIndoors <https://www.mapspeople.com/mapsindoors/>, WRLD <https://www.wrld3d.com/3d-maps/indoor-mapping>, among others), we had a budget of $0 and could not afford to outsource this. We consulted with several GIS & mapping professionals (thank you, AMNH!) and determined this could be done using free geospatial software (QGIS <https://qgis.org/en/site/> + OpenLayers <https://openlayers.org/>) with a series of labor-intensive workarounds. Most free online mapping tools are meant for outdoor use, so the bulk of our work (aside from manually digitizing floorplans) was in tweaking OpenLayers to display the floors of an indoor museum. This is the culmination of those months of tweaks, and we hope you find it helpful on your own mapping journey. For general questions, please contact our developer, Roger, at rt...@fieldmuseum.org. For technical issues, it's best to file an issue in Github <https://github.com/arcataroger/openlayers_indoor_map/issues> so it can be properly tracked (but email is ok too). Thanks! Sincerely, The Digital Team at the Field Museum, with thanks to our friends in Exhibitions, IT, and the Keller Science Action Center _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer Network (http://www.mcn.edu) To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l@mcn.edu To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: http://lists.mcn.edu/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l The MCN-L archives can be found at: http://www.mail-archive.com/mcn-l@mcn.edu/
