About the Footprints map
Footprints: Jewish Books Through Time and Place collects the evidence that a copy of a Jewish book was at a place at a time: an owner's signature, a censor's mark, a bookseller's catalogue, a library catalogue. This map shows where the books were printed and where their copies went.
What is on the map
- Printed
- 6,481 of 6,860 imprints (editions) at their place of printing, in their year.
- Footprints
- 17,939 of 24,482 footprints at their place, in their time. Footprints dates them in the Extended Date/Time Format; an uncertain or approximate date counts as its year, a period ("between 1900 and 1961", "the 1860s") for each of its years, an open end ("before 1862") as the known year. 2,599 footprints have a place but no date, and 1,682 a date but no place: they are listed with their copy, but not on the map.
- Journeys
- The way of a copy: from the place of printing of its imprint through the places of its footprints, in the order of their dates. A line is drawn for each step between two places, in the time of the step's later end; lines of many copies between the same two places are drawn as one, thicker line. A curve bends to the right of the way it goes, so the two directions between two places are apart.
- Places
- 1,027 places, as Footprints names them, with their coordinates. Areas are present-day countries (Natural Earth); the map shows no historical borders.
Select a place for what was printed and what was found there, a book for its imprints and the journeys of its copies, a copy for its way step by step, and a person for the records they are named in. Every record links to the Footprints site (works and footprints have a page there) and to its view in JudaicaLink, where it is joined with the records of the same person or place from other sources (the entity pages).
Counts
| Count | Number |
|---|---|
| copies | 10,998 |
| entity pages with footprints records | 23,280 |
| footprints | 24,482 |
| footprints with a place but no time | 2,599 |
| footprints with a time and a place | 17,939 |
| footprints with a time but no place | 1,682 |
| imprints | 6,860 |
| imprints with a year and a place | 6,481 |
| persons | 11,642 |
| places | 1,027 |
| works | 3,765 |
The data
Built on 2026-10-26 from the stable versions of these JudaicaLink datasets. The dataset footprints is made from the Footprints API (2026-10) and keeps its records, fields and identifiers.
| Dataset | Version | Licence | What the map takes |
|---|---|---|---|
| ep | 2026-10-26-2 | CC0 1.0 | which entity page holds which Footprints record (for links from the knowledge graph) |
| footprints | 2026-10-26-2 | CC BY-SA 4.0 | works, imprints, copies, footprints, persons and places, with their dates, roles and coordinates |
Footprints: Jewish Books Through Time and Place, ed. Michelle Chesner et al., under CC BY-SA 4.0. The base map is made from Natural Earth 1:50m (public domain) and is part of this site. All data of the map: footprints.json.
Using the map
- Drag the timeline or type the years; Play moves the window forward.
- Choose a country, or Draw area and drag a rectangle on the map.
- The address of the page keeps the selection, so it can be shared.
/footprints/?iri=…opens the map at a Footprints record or an entity page of JudaicaLink.