Following is my suggestion for a historical research project based primarily on existing archives:
Utilize digitized map collections to assemble and compare the “evolution” of specific errors in depictions of North America during the early modern period. This project would be bounded at the beginning by the first post-Columbus maps that depict the New World, and at the end by the maps resulting from Captain Cook’s voyages, which effectively mapped the major contours of the Pacific.
The purposes of this exercise would be 1) to “test” if standard interpretations of influences and borrowing by generations and “schools” of mapmakers are confirmed or questioned by close comparison of all available images; and 2) like a great many web-based history projects, to make a somewhat arcane subject more readily available to the interested.
This project would require sophisticated imaging and search tools that could sort by both date and location, and the ability to assemble selected images in order. Further, it would be desirable to be able to view two or more images at once—perhaps in frames, since one image could be held while others compared. Existing scholarship on this subject would be used to develop a timeline, context, and known or conventionally accepted interpretations of “information flow” in mapmaking.
I envision the conceptual organization of this project as somewhat monograph-like, in presenting an introduction and context, a “problem” to be considered or tested, and a short conclusion. It would be designed and directed primarily towards a scholarly audience, but with some appeal to the “interested, educated amateur” public also.