Originally I planned on using Brian McBride’s Bootleaf to launch this project of mapping nonhuman presence across a Victorian landscape. His template conveniently conjoins the benefits of Leaflet and Bootstrap, but its convenience is also its pitfall, at least for me. For instance, if someone would like to add multiple maps or different centers of the map, one has to change multiple lines of coding, unwrapping particular attributes from their junctions, which inevitably becomes more time consuming and very frustrating.

Thankfully, I have discovered another template created by Stephen Lead and his team that circumvents the problems found in McBride’s code and makes it more adaptable. With their template, it is possible to incorporate many maps and personalize the code to your project. With their code as a foundation, I will be able to map five novels with which to start. Each novel will have its own map, and multiple identifiers, allowing users to toggle between maps, and better yet, bookmark attributes of interest. With this code, I can also add a query widget for which I am very excited and have not yet considered. This will allow users to type in specific identifiers they’d like to explore, such as “dog” or “lower class”, after which the corresponding ids will appear across the maps. This is especially beneficial given this project is dedicated to allowing users to form their own quandaries and speculations regarding nonhuman presence, or what it means to be human in a Victorian landscape.