Saw a cool interactive map at the Portland library that got me thinking about simple projects

I was at the Central Library downtown yesterday and they had this digital map showing real-time book checkouts by neighborhood. It was just colored dots popping up on a simple city outline. The librarian told me it runs on a basic Python script that pulls data from their system every hour. It made me realize how a beginner could build something similar with free tools and a weekend. Has anyone made a simple data visualization like this as a first project?

3 comments

3 Comments

oscar7431mo agoMost Upvoted

Try Mapbox with their free tier.

webb.ben1mo ago

Mapbox is fine but honestly why overcomplicate it. That whole geocoding and pin drop thing sounds like a lot of work for a library map. Could just screenshot a google map and call it a day.

faith_carter1mo ago

Honestly that's a perfect starter project. I used Folium with Python to map out local food truck locations for my first thing. You just need a CSV file of addresses, geocode them, and drop pins on a free tile layer. The library one sounds like it's basically the same logic.