documentation

Documentation

This repository lists projects and websites part of the NYC Space/Time Directory, how they were built, and how they work together. You can also see the project’s interactive architecture diagram for more information.

Homepage

• Description: Project’s homepage
• URL: http://spacetime.nypl.org
• GitHub: https://github.com/nypl-spacetime/nypl-spacetime.github.io
• Technology: Static Jekyll website, hosted via GitHub Pages
• Dependencies: Users can download open historical geospatial datasets via the project’s homepage, they are hosted on AWS S3

Surveyor

• Description: Website for crowdsourced geotagging of NYPL’s photo collections
• URL: http://spacetime.nypl.org/surveyor
• GitHub: https://github.com/nypl-spacetime/surveyor
• Technology: React app, hosted on GitHub Pages. Surveyor reads photo data from the Brick-by-brick API, and writes submissions there, too
• Dependencies: Brick-by-brick API

Atlas

• Description: Map and search interface for NYC Space/Time Directory data
• URL: http://spacetime.nypl.org/atlas
• GitHub: https://github.com/nypl-spacetime/atlas
• Technology: React app, hosted on GitHub Pages
• Dependencies: Search API

Maps by Decade

• Description: Website to browse digitized and georectified NYPL maps in a visual way
• URL: http://spacetime.nypl.org/maps-by-decade
• GitHub: https://github.com/nypl-spacetime/maps-by-decade
• Technology: React app, hosted on GitHub Pages. Maps by Decade needs two JSON data files to function, but does not depend on a database or API
• Dependencies: group-maps dataset on AWS S3 (served via CloudFront)

Digital Collections Tab

• Description: Browser extension that shows a photo from Ditigal Collections when users open a new tab
• URL: https://www.nypl.org/blog/2017/08/31/digital-collections-tab
• GitHub: https://github.com/nypl-spacetime/digital-collections-tab
• Technology: HTML + JavaScript
• Dependencies: Brick-by-brick (but the Tab extension will keep working with a set of offline images when Brick-by-brick is offline)

Extract/Transform/Load modules

• Description: Collection of Node.js modules that download, parse, and transform data from a selection of NYPL resources and create NYC Space/Time Directory datasets
• GitHub: https://github.com/nypl-spacetime/spacetime-etl
• Technology: Node.js
• Dependencies: different NYPL resources, like Map Warper, Building Inspector, etc.

Datasets

• Description: NDJSON and ZIP files containing historical geospatial data, scripts are available to create derivatives and upload data to S3
• URL: http://spacetime.nypl.org/#data
• Dependencies: AWS S3

AWS S3

• Description: Location where NYC Space/Time Directory data is stored
• URL: https://s3.amazonaws.com/spacetime-nypl-org/
• Dependencies: AWS

Search API

• Description: Search API for NYC Space/Time Directory data
• URL: https://fpr9gjsw3c.execute-api.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/dev/
• GitHub: https://github.com/nypl-spacetime/spacetime-api
• Technology: Serverless Node.js Express app on AWS Lambda
• Dependencies: AWS Elasticsearch index, with NYC Space/Time Directory data, ingested with etl-elasticsearch-ingest

Brick-by-brick

• Description: Simple JSON API for small crowdsourcing apps
• URL: http://brick-by-brick.herokuapp.com/
• GitHub: https://github.com/nypl-spacetime/brick-by-brick
• Technology: Node.js/Express API, with PostgreSQL database
• Dependencies: Heroku

Architecture

• Description: Interactive architecture diagram of components of NYC Space/Time Directory
• URL: http://spacetime.nypl.org/architecture/
• GitHub: https://github.com/nypl-spacetime/architecture
• Technology: HTML + JavaScript
• Dependencies: data-dependencies dataset on AWS S3 (served via CloudFront)

Map Warper

• Description: Website for crowdsourced map georectification
• URL: http://maps.nypl.org/warper/
• GitHub: https://github.com/nypl-spacetime/nypl-warper
• Technology: Ruby on Rails with PostgreSQL database, as well as GDAL and GeoServer
• Dependencies: Server hosted by NYPL’s IT Department

Building Inspector

• Description: Crowdsourced extraction of building and address data from historical maps
• URL: http://buildinginspector.nypl.org/
• GitHub: https://github.com/nypl-spacetime/building-inspector
• Technology: Ruby on Rails with PostgreSQL database
• Dependencies: Heroku