By Space-Time 🗺️, ⏳

Exploring and Explaining the curated resources in a repository or any archive are usually not provided at the same instance. Cartographic principles also either provide details based on scale of a map which determines whether the spatial representation is tailored for exploring or either explaining. To explore usually starts with broader overview, which uses statisctical methods to provide inference which loses significant details at a larger scale. However, this lets people understand what is happening in a more broadre sense. Care needs to be taken how much and what generalization of factual details is necessary.

Panning, and zooming are two essential interaction tools that digital maps provide that enables people travel from overall/general picture to specfic area to know the details, so that explanation or questioning something becomes possible. However, the details in reality changes over time because of complex relationship between people, land and systems. Thus temporal dimension as a common tool to guide the spatial exploration and explanation becomes an essential feature for historical atlas. Furthermore, what details are to be communicated and how they are related with each other are very vital in bringing out the context of the whole explorative exercise mediated by space and time. When spatial dimension provides geographical representation, temporal dimension provides choronological representation, context either abstract or grounded can be represented based on the categorized facts and possible inter-relationships between them.