Build-A-Layer allows the user to define criteria for up to three information layers and one visual material layer. You can choose to display information from 11 city directories, filtered by residential or commercial address and further refined through your own searches in 5 categories. Visual materials can be filtered and displayed according to two criteria.

The Build-A-Layer and Visual Materials toolkits provide the main access point to customizing the information displayed in the Information Mapping Area.

The Build-a-Layer Toolkit allows you to set 4 criteria for searching and displaying directory information

Directory:

Use this drop-down menu to choose directory information to

Display:

Pick a raido button to display all listings, or either residential or commerical listings only

Search for:

Fill in the box with a term of your choice. NOTE: Searching is case sensitive AND punctuation sensitive and currently allows for exact match only

within:

Sets your search term into a metadata field

When you are finished click on "Close Toolkit" and your criteria will be reflected in the Build-A-Layer area and ready to be mapped.

Visual Materials Toolkit

The Visual Materials Toolkit allows you to set 2 criteria for searching and displaying visual image information

Data Source:

Visual Materials is the only data source

Search for:

Fill in the box with a term of your choice. NOTE: Searching is case sensitive AND punctuation sensitive and currently allows for exact match only

within:

Sets your search term into a metadata field (Title, Location, Creator, Street Name, or Date)

When you are finished click on "Close Toolkit" and your criteria will be reflected in the Build-A-Layer area and is ready to be mapped.

Includes the map display area, the scale measuer, and the java tools (when enabled). Changes to the base map or the Build-A-Layer functions are reflected here when the "Go" button is clicked.

Information about plotted points queried on the map is displayed here. Results from each layer are listed separately.

Legend/Maps provides a guide to the symbols used in the Information Mapping Area, a listing of historical base maps available for viewing in the Information Mapping Area and Viewable Map Size choices. The Legend and Maps tabs both offer three choices of map display sizes. Click on the dimensions listed to change the map display size. Change the base map by clicking on one of the listed dates.

Lighter and Darker shades of the same color (excepting yellow, which contrasts with orange) are use to differentiate between commercial and residential address points from selected directory data sources. Colors and symbols are predefined by their position in the

Accessible by clicking on corresponding tabs in upper right corner of Cowpaths, Maps is the default tab displayed.

This query requires three steps - querying and displaying data from the city directory, changing the base map, and query selected points on the map. Steps are listed below. Steps 1 and 2 are interchangeable.

Step 1: Quering the 1845 Directory for Washington Street and plotting results:

1. Click on square icon to left of first "Click to define Map Layer" in the Build-A-Layer Area
2. Select 1845 Directory from Drop down Menu in the Build-A-layer control panel
3. Click circle next to Commercial Addresses
4. Select Street Name as filter by category
5. Enter "Washington Street" (without quotation marks) in Search field
6. Click Apply changes to see terms and constraints applied to Build-A-Layer Area
7. Check the View box adjacent to the 1845 listing in Build-A-Layer Area
8. Click Go

Step 2: Changing from the modern base map to the 1844 base map:

1. Click on the Maps tab in the Legend/Maps area of Cowpaths
2. Click on 1844 in the list of available base maps
3. It may be necessary to zoom in on the map to the area surrounding the plotted points, see Zoom in for help with the zoom tool

Step 3: Querying the plotted points on the map for detailed results:

1. Click the Query tool if it is not already selected (button will change to darker blue)
2. Position query tool pointer over area to be reviewed
3. Click directly on a point or click and drag the querry tool pointer over a larger group of points
4. Detailed results will be listed below map and the queried points will change color on the map

Click here to view a screenshot of Sample Query 1.