Introduction
Google Fusion Tables is an online service provided by Google that allows the user to display maps, tables, and metadata on a website. Although it is in beta format, it useful for mapping digital objects that you can “geolocate” either by street address, intersection, place name, postal code/zip code or latitude/longitude coordinates. You can embed tables, maps, and metadata descriptions using html code. You can also provide users with a direct URL map or table in Google Drive. It is also possible to export data tables in several spreadsheet formats including Excel. Mapped data can be exported in KML format, and visualized and manipulated in Google Earth.
To test how Google Fusion Tables geocodes street addresses and intersections, a small sample of historical photographs of Bank Robberies from the Toronto Telegram was used to plot points and integrate historical images. To test how Google Fusion Tables maps by geographical coordinates, a large sample of oblique aerial photos from the Lou Wise Collection was used to map the location of the photos.