maps-from-fiction

Data Repository for Castles, Battlefields, and Continents: A Dataset of Maps from Literature

Repository Information

The final dataset download includes:

• jpg files for 2622 identified maps
• csv file of map filenames
• csv file of MARC record data for all novels and for map-novels
• finetuned EfficientNet models (b0, b7, and V2_L) and classification outputs for each model
• results from the CLIP model
• the sample of non-map-novels used for spatial language comparison

This dataset can be downloaded here Please email Axel at adb333 [at] cornell.edu for any questions about the paper, data, or code.

Please cite this paper if you use any portion of the dataset:

@article{10.63744@oYbvYsUA743D,
title = {Castles, Battlefields, and Continents: A Dataset of Maps from Literature},
author = {Axel Bax and David Mimno and Matthew Wilkens},
year = {2025},
journal = {Anthology of Computers and the Humanities},
volume = {3},
pages = {280--294},
editor = {Taylor Arnold, Margherita Fantoli, and Ruben Ros},
doi = {10.63744/oYbvYsUA743D}
}

Note: Two maps have been included in this dataset, but should be excluded: 32000002642652_00000033.jpg and 39015030849908_00000219.jpg These maps contain cartoons with a map in them, one of the edge cases we chose to exclude.

Tutorial

We also include a tutorial for you to apply a similar workflow to your own dataset of images in need of binary classification. You can find it under tutorials.

Interesting Maps

Here are a few interesting maps from the dataset:

The Woman in the Alcove by Anna Katharine Green

Colonel Jack by Daniel Defoe

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson