Using TLCMap: Case Studies for Researchers

What Is TLCMap?

TLCMap (Time-Layered Cultural Map) is a free online tool to create digital maps for humanities social science research.

TLCMap helps researchers collate historical information from many different sources into a single visual display, making comparative insight far easier.

Researchers can upload a data set of geographic coordinates, dates/times and event descriptions, and TLCMaps uses that to create an interactive map.

Users can control the map view to see what happened at the same time or at the same location. 

Read 2 case studies showing how TLCMap has been used, and some generals tips for using TLCMap:

Case Study 1: Coral Discovery Project

Using TLCMap to collate and display European scientific expedition voyages in the Pacific before 1834

Read case study

Case Study 2: Mapping Monuments

Using TLCMap to collate and display monuments and “Big Things” across Australia

Read case study

Tips for Using TLCMap

Including on wrangling data and using the TLCMap interface

Read tips

The case studies were presented on 5 February 2025 at the 2025 ARDC HASS and Indigenous Research Data Commons Summer School by Dr Claire Brennan, James Cook University (JCU) and Dr Ana Stevenson, Anglicare Southern Queensland and University of Southern Queensland. Watch the recording:

Case Study 1: Coral Discovery Project

How the TLCMap was used

The first step in the project, “Expeditions to the Pacific”, involves mapping and then analysing European scientific expeditions that left Europe for the Pacific between 1768 and 1834. 

Data for TLCMap is drawn from the diaries and maps of explorers and seafarers. Around 70 datasets have been created from publicly available diaries and journals, for example the 1766 Bougainville expedition sourced from the Internet Archive copy of a Voyage Round the World by The King’s Frigate La Boudeuse and the Supply Ship L’Etoile by Louis Antoine de Bougainville (translated by John Fegan).

The research project involves 3 elements:

1. the datasets stored in the research data repository at James Cook University
2. The Coral Discovery Maps at the TLCMap site, which draws on this data to create the interactive visualisation
3. The Expeditions to the Pacific website, using WordPress, where users can search between datasets for many different voyages directly and view these individually using the TLCMap.

The layers feature of TLCMaps allowed the researchers to create a different layer for each voyage. They could view and process data from one voyage without this impacting the other layers. 

Several types of views are possible with TLCMaps, for example all data points relevant to a particular year, displayed across a map. This project uses a view that displays locations visited by a single voyage, with lines connecting the first location visited with the second, and so on, to show the expedition path.

Mapping the journeys using the TL Map allows researchers to easily compare these. Researchers can focus on either the routes of particular ships or on particular places. They can see which expeditions visited the same place across time.  

The impact of using TLCMap

TLCMap underpins the Expeditions to the Pacific. This allows both scientists and humanities researchers to understand this collection of voyages at any scale in their interrogations of the past. Users can trace the distribution of collections central to European science’s understanding of the world and identify scientific collection sites. 

In the future, the data collected through the Expeditions to the Pacific project may be used to locate relevant sites for coral topotype DNA collection. In addition, information from the journals could be used to establish environmental baselines for the places visited, and could be used to track environmental change over time. The project may also help in identifying the origins of museum collections, which could be significant for repatriation.

Learn more

Learn more about project and view the TLCMaps.

Watch a short video about the project from JCU:

Case Study 2: Mapping Monuments

How the TLC Map was used

Data was initially sourced from Monument Australia and supplemented by “Big Things” data, initially drawn from Wikipedia. 

Like the Coral Discovery maps, the data itself is stored separately from the TLCMap interface. The Mapping Monuments research project site allows the user to navigate between the different TLCMap views and provides more information about each dataset.

The impact of using TLCMap

The metadata in each monument record allows users to quickly see on the TLCMap the location of all monuments matching a criterion like “human figure”. This enables critique of Australia’s monuments through analysis of their representation of gender, colonial history, race, and other elements.  This way of interrogating the data made it clear to the research team that traditional statues tend to be metropolitan, while Big Things tend to be regional.  The temporal element of TLCMap makes it possible to see when commemoration of various types of events and persons was undertaken, facilitating recognition of what types of heritage have been important at different times.

Tips for Using TLCMap

Dr Brennan and Dr Stevenson shared their insights on using TLCMap in research projects. 

Tips about wrangling data to use with TLCMaps

• Using “Big Things” data from Wikipedia was not simple. It often was not easy to obtain latitude and longitude.
• The negative character in latitude coordinates is significant. Initially several Australian “Big Things” displayed in Japan and Europe before the lack of the negative sign was noticed.  
• It is important to develop criteria for how to represent uncertain dates because TLCMap requires exact dates. Often a starting date was not available for monuments, so the researchers’ approach involved estimating and adding a nominal date instead. 

Tips about using the TLCMap interface

• The TLC may not have fields to match each bit of metadata in the original dataset, and has character limits on what can be seen when the user clicks on a location pin. The Big Things project added: latitude, longitude, place, name, description, start date, end date, and a single link back to a reference. Fuller data can be easily provided via links to external datasets. 
• TLCMap is very much a backend. It’s not a shopfront. If you’re embarking on a TLC project, you do need to consider what your shopfront is going to be, for example the Expeditions to the Pacific site in this case. 
• There are some frustrations with dealing with TLCMap. You need some patience. And if you make a mistake on a map, often you are better to trash the entire map and start again. 
• It’s best to refine and improve the data on the local source, rather than trying to do this directly in the TLCMap interface. 
• Other digital tools, including Google My Maps and Streetview, can be useful for small tasks with simple data.
• Using a multi-layer map, even if you have only one layer, will provide more stability as it creates a permanent URL even if the underlying map is trashed and recreated.

Overall, Dr Brennan and Dr Stevenson emphasised that although digital projects may appear easy on the surface, they take a long time to produce.

Recommended Further Reading

• Arthur, Paul Longley, Erik Champion, Hugh Craig, Ning Gu, Mark Harvey, Victoria Haskins, Andrew May, Bill Pascoe, Alana Piper, Lyndall Ryan, Rosalind Smith, and Deb Verhoeven, “Time-Layered Cultural Map of Australia,” Proceedings of the Digital Humanities in the Nordic Countries 5th Conference, eds. Sanita Reinsone, Inguna Skadiņa, Anda Baklāne, and Jānis Daugavietis (Central Europe Workshop Proceedings, 2020), 184-191.
• Brennan, Claire, “Digital Humanities, Digital Methods, Digital History, and Digital Outputs: History Writing and the Digital Revolution,” History Compass 16, no. 10 (2018): 1-12.
• Brennan, Claire, “Land and Sea: The Significance of Named Places in Digitally Mapping Historic Ocean Voyages,” M/C Journal 27, no. 5 (2024).
• Brennan, Claire and Ana Stevenson, “Monumentally Kitsch: The Decommissioned Captain Cook Statues of Aotearoa (New Zealand) and Australia,” Radical History Review, Special Edition: “Memory Over Forgetting: Monuments, Memorials and Intangible Heritage,” eds. Bonita Bennett, Bonny Ibhawoh, Alex Lichtenstein, and Daniel Walkowitz (2025): 32-52.
• Clarke, Amy, “Making a Mark: Displays of Regional and National Identity in the Big Things of Australia and Canada,” Journal of Australian Studies 47, no. 2 (2023): 238-55.
• Clarke, Amy, “The Commercial and Regional Imagery of Big Things: Establishing a Foundation for the Study of Oversized Roadside Landmarks,” Journal of Material Culture 29, no. 1 (2024): 3-25.
• Jones, Mike, and Alana Piper, “Digital History,” Australian Historical Studies 55, no. 1 (2024): 178-203.
• Nichols, Julie, Uncle Lindsay Thomas, Travis Thomas, Jared Thomas, Fu Hong Tang, and Delene Weber, “Terrains of Country: Mapping Co-Design Methods,” ASEAN Journal of Community Engagement 8, no. 2 (2024): 142-163.
• Piper, Alana, “What Is Digital History?” Public History Review 28 (2021): 1-4.
• Ryan, Lyndall, “Newspaper Evidence of Colonial Frontier Massacres in Australia,” History Australia 18, no. 4 (2021): 845-849.
• Ryan, Lyndall, “Digital Map of Colonial Frontier Massacres in Australia 1788-1930,” Teaching History 54, no. 3 (2020): 13-20.Wegman, Imogen, “Time Layered Cultural Map,” Reviews in Digital Humanities 3, no. 11 (2022), https://doi.org/10.21428/3e88f64f.ea03b1ca.