China Maps Bibliographic Database: 1765-1994

China Dimensions Data Collection provides bibliographic records for more than 400 historical maps of China. The database includes details such as title, author, publisher, year, projection, and thematic features like land cover, transportation, and rivers. Records span from 1765 to 1994 and are available in both English and Chinese.

Use Cases

• Tracing the evolution of cartographic techniques and publishing based on projection, publisher, and year fields.
• Analyzing historical land cover and vegetation patterns from map annotations for forest, desert, and grassland.
• Studying the development of transportation infrastructure through recorded features for roads and railroads.
• Assessing the spatial focus of historical mapping efforts using provincial, county, and township coverage data.

Strengths

• Contains records for more than 400 maps, providing a substantial sample for analysis.
• Covers a long temporal range of 229 years, from 1765 to 1994.
• Includes detailed, searchable bibliographic and thematic annotations in two languages.

Limitations

• Conflicting last-updated dates between sources (1994 vs. 2026) create uncertainty about metadata freshness.
• Column names and exact data structure are not explicitly provided in the available metadata.
• The dataset size (rows, file size) is not documented across any platform.

Provenance

Source

Produced in collaboration with the University of Washington as part of the China in Time and Space (CITAS) project and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN).

Collection Method

Historical collection and compilation of bibliographic information from maps.

Time Range

1765 to 1994

Freshness

1994-12-31 00:00:00

Geography

China