researchers, power of data and GIS II

1. researchers, power of data and GIS II Dr Paul S Ell Centre for Data Digitisation and Analysis Queen’s University Belfast paul.ell@qub.ac.uk JiscDigitisation Final Programme Meeting 3 July 2013

2. Or Why isn’t e-content having and impact and what can GIS, in the broadest sense, do about it…

3. GIS in its broadest sense. Historical (and Humanities?) GIS has failed • Most researchers aren’t interested in maps. They do not form part of their research process. They can’t read them and don’t understand them • Historical GIS traditionally focussed on mapping census data by administrative units. Almost no one can use the software to do this and few are interested in the results • The humanities is not about statistics, is usually about text and multimedia content • So let’s forget about traditional GIS except in its broadest sense and focus on why e-content has had a limited impact and what can be done about it

4. Problem I: Many e-Resources – a deluge • Historical census data for Britain 1801-2001 • Welsh historical statistics • Historical census data for the Netherlands • Historical census data for India • Digitisation of recent census data for NISRA • Historical Gazetteers for Britain • Data on the 1851 Religious Census for Britain • Digitisation of a sample of place-names from the English Place-Name Survey and linking them to a GIS • Digitisation of the 1676 Compton Census • Data extraction from the Winchester Rolls • Computerisation of medieval manorial crop yield data • Hearth Tax Data • Datasets on Irish religion from 1834 • Scottish National Dictionary • Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue • British Parliamentary Papers in a series of grants with BOPCRIS • Mortality and hospital admission data for England • Historical diaries relating to China from an Irish perspective • Key holdings from QUB Library Special collections • Various small digitisation projects for NMNI • Convict database for Down County Museum • Photographic plate digitisation for Down County Museum • Digitisation of the Banbridge Almanac for SEELB • Digitisation of Vital Registration data for Northern Ireland • Image scans of Latin texts for Ireland for UU • Database of Irish Historical Statistics • Act of Union Virtual Library • Hansard for the Stormont Parliament • CDDA/JSTOR Ireland Collection

5. Problem II: Data silos

6. Problem III: Sustainability

7. So what’s this got to do with GIS, or rather gazetteers – lists of places? • As Humphrey has indicated, place is important. In the Humanities and Social Sciences almost everything happens somewhere • Almost every e-resource refers to that somewhere, usually including a geographical name but names change over time • The importance of location has long been recognised and there are several existing online gazetteers – Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names, GeoNames, Alexandria Digital Library etc. • However, current gazetteers lack chronological depth and spatial detail. They are not fit for purpose for those whose interest is not modern place-names for ‘significant’ places • But place-names can be used as a resource discovery tool, an information augmentation tool, an enhanced way of using e-content, and by linking content can help sustain resources

8. Place-Name e-infrastructure: Digital Exposure of English Place-names (DEEP) • So for England we have resolved the problem of linking places through a new piece of e-infrastructure. • DEEP is a £650,000 JISC project under the Strand B call to create a comprehensive spatio-temporal gazetteer • The project has digitised the work of the English Place-Names Society who, since the mid-1920s, have systematically collected in excess of 5 million name forms • There are currently 86 place-name volumes, with £900k funding from AHRC to complete the final four volumes for Shropshire • New volumes will be ingested into the gazetteer through a structured data entry and xml tagging system

9. DEEP II • The Survey records names from cities to fields, streets and individual buildings. Historical variants (forms) are attested with dates (critically allowing existing e-resources to directly link to the gazetteer), the linguistic elements which make up the names and free text descriptions of these etymologies. • The digital gazetteer, served via CDDA at Queens’ will facilitate, for example, a search of a place-name in all its variant forms by keying in any one variant. Where a source exists in digital form it will allow a direct link to that source or sources. • It will also be possible to submit place-name rich sources to the gazetteer for semi-automated geo-resolution via the Jisc funded Unlock service • The gazetteer has the potential to be associated with key strategic partners bringing data together in the way Humphrey has outlined • But, to work, content simply needs to contain a place-name form and be searchable

15. New technologies and collaborations to enhance existing content Crowdsourcing Welsh place names: working with Galaxy Zoo (Oxford), The University of Wales and the People’s Collection, Wales to build an online gazetteer of OS 6 inch maps Oldweather.org

16. So how does this help resolve the use of e-content • It allows resources to be discovered through deep linking • It brings relevant content together • It is one of very few projects providing vital research infrastructure – digitisation of journals, or census data might be considered in the same light • By allowing resource discovery it uplifts user site numbers helping demonstrate their use and impact justifying sustainability • It represents a key change for Jisc, and one that should be built on. It is not funding the development of a research or teaching collection but a tool. There’s a need for more tools including methodological tools – generic crowdsourcing toolkits, multi-collection metadata for example • However, it needs to be embedded, first in Jisc collections to justify its expense and demonstrate its utility and it turn deals with Jisc project data silos

17. DEEP: Research infrastructure linking disparate content by location