JiscMail Logo
Email discussion lists for the UK Education and Research communities

Help for NOF-DIGI Archives


NOF-DIGI Archives

NOF-DIGI Archives


NOF-DIGI@JISCMAIL.AC.UK


View:

Message:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

By Topic:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

By Author:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

Font:

Proportional Font

LISTSERV Archives

LISTSERV Archives

NOF-DIGI Home

NOF-DIGI Home

NOF-DIGI  March 2002

NOF-DIGI March 2002

Options

Subscribe or Unsubscribe

Subscribe or Unsubscribe

Log In

Log In

Get Password

Get Password

Subject:

Re: Demo geographical front-end to cultural collections

From:

Martin Jones <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Martin Jones <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Thu, 14 Mar 2002 13:34:19 -0000

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (121 lines)

The use of mapping as a front end to information is of interest in the very
different world of advice services.  Colleagues in Resource Information
Services (partners in our NOF project) are developing a website for the
Greater London Authority to provide information on services for homeless
people.  The site makes some use of mapping as one means of access to
information about services, but also provides other routes - the type of
service, or 'who for'.

If it's of interest the beta test site is at www.ris.org.uk/homelesslondon.

Martin

-----Original Message-----
From: Humphrey Southall [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 13 March 2002 21:40
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Demo geographical front-end to cultural collections

Dear All,

Many projects within nof-digitise are creating place-specific content, but
how do we create a SENSE of place?  Obviously, if a collection comes
entirely from a single small area, some kind of sense of place may be
created simply by looking at it.  However, most projects cover areas larger
than most people's notion of a place -- a neighbourhood or locality, but
certainly not a whole county let alone a whole region.  Sense of place must
therefore be partly about selection within a collection.

However, it is less than obvious that simply providing some kind of
geographical search engine, within a single site or via some kind of
programme-wide portal, is all we need.  Some very old ideas from geography
say that places are defined by site and situation;  by the land they sit
on, and the other places that surround them.  In this sense, place is about
context as much as content, and we need to PRESENT our content
geographically, not just provide a spatial search engine.

... all of which leads into some work the Great Britain Historical GIS
project has been contributing to.  James Macgill of GBHGIS and Colin
Chinnery of the British Library's International Dunhuang project have
created a demonstration system that presents one vision of how a
geographical front end to the BL's content might look.  A version of this
demonstration is now on-line at:

                http://www.ccg.leeds.ac.uk/geotools/blpilot/MapKiosk.html

Please note that address;  although it may look like part of the BL site,
it is hosted at Leeds University and nobody is saying the BL will
necessarily create such a system for itself, as part of its work for
NOF-Digitise or otherwise (so please do not circulate this address widely,
or link to it).  However, a presentation of the demonstration system to BL
staff a few weeks ago seems to have created considerable interest.  NB the
system now on-line is slightly cut down from the system shown
internally:  a base map showing relief features ran off an overseas site
and had to be removed for performance reasons, and some excerpts from the
National Sound Archive raised IPR issues.  This means you can no longer use
the system to locate recordings of wrens singing, and then compare the
songs of English, Greek and Taiwanese wrens.

The demonstration system is hopefully fairly self-explanatory, but it was
constructed using GeoTools, an open source toolkit for geographical
visualisation of which James Macgill is the principal developer (see
www.geotools.org).  Geotools is written in Java, so there are some
restrictions on what browsers it will run within.  However, it has been
written very carefully to use a limited "lowest common denominator" subset
of Java, and we would claim it should run on just about any desktop PC
unless you have tried really hard to find a SERIOUSLY obsolete
browser.  The GBHGIS site itself is being designed so that reference
enquiries will not depend on the use of GeoTools, and it is hard to imagine
anyone wanting to do interactive graphic visualisation on a mobile
phone.  It would be useful to have some feedback on compatibility;  did it
just run?

The "BL" demo system enables users to select material by location and time
period as well as type -- you can zoom in on particular areas, and narrow
the time period via a "timeline" bar.  This obviously depends on including
metadata over and above Dublin Core.  This is an area where there is a good
deal of development work currently going on.  Programme participants may be
interested in a meeting I am organising within the Social Science History
Association meeting this October, on "Metadata for Time and Space".  So
long as no-one drops out, this will include presentations on the Alexandria
Digital Library's Gazetteer Content Standard, the Electronic Cultural Atlas
Initiative's Timemap extensions to Dublin Core, English Heritage's
Timelines time period thesaurus, the Federal Geographic Data Committee's
standards, and a round table covering work in progress to add geography to
the Data Documentation Initiative's standard.  At this point I have to add
that the meeting is in St. Louis, Missouri -- but the real focus of most
standard setting work is the US, and unless we interact with US projects we
cannot expect to have much impact on these processes.  I find it irritating
that we have been specifically forbidden to use NOF funds to attend such
meetings, and a bit humiliating that I have only been able to get so
involved through US bodies funding my travel.

Geotools, incidentally, is ahead of any similar open source project
elsewhere in the world, compares well with commercial alternatives which
generally involve Windows-only plug-ins or ActiveX components, and provides
a significant part of the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative's technical
infrastructure.  Being open source, anyone can use it free of charge, but
it is a toolkit so you will need someone to bolt different tools together
into an applet.  ECAI's Timemap Viewer (see
http://www.archaeology.usyd.edu.au/timemap) is a general purpose and
ready-assembled applet built from GeoTools.

Best wishes,

Humphrey Southall



======================================================
Humphrey Southall
Reader in Geography/Director, Great Britain Historical GIS Project
Department of Geography, University of Portsmouth

Buckingham Building, Lion Terrace, Portsmouth PO1 3HE

GIS Project Office: (023) 9284 2500
Home office:  (020) 8853 0396
Mobile:  (07736) 727928

Web site:  http://www.geog.port.ac.uk/gbhgis

Top of Message | Previous Page | Permalink

JiscMail Tools


RSS Feeds and Sharing


Advanced Options


Archives

January 2023
February 2021
October 2020
June 2020
March 2020
January 2020
October 2019
July 2019
January 2016
July 2015
April 2014
March 2014
January 2014
July 2013
June 2013
March 2013
January 2013
October 2012
July 2012
April 2012
March 2012
January 2012
December 2011
October 2011
August 2011
June 2011
May 2011
April 2011
March 2011
February 2011
January 2011
December 2010
November 2010
September 2010
August 2010
July 2010
June 2010
May 2010
April 2010
March 2010
December 2009
November 2009
October 2009
September 2009
August 2009
July 2009
April 2009
March 2009
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006
June 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
February 2006
January 2006
December 2005
November 2005
October 2005
September 2005
August 2005
July 2005
June 2005
May 2005
April 2005
March 2005
February 2005
January 2005
December 2004
November 2004
October 2004
September 2004
August 2004
July 2004
June 2004
May 2004
April 2004
March 2004
February 2004
January 2004
December 2003
November 2003
October 2003
September 2003
August 2003
July 2003
June 2003
May 2003
April 2003
March 2003
February 2003
January 2003
December 2002
November 2002
October 2002
September 2002
August 2002
July 2002
June 2002
May 2002
April 2002
March 2002
February 2002
January 2002
December 2001
November 2001
October 2001
September 2001
August 2001
July 2001
June 2001
May 2001
April 2001
March 2001
February 2001
January 2001
December 2000
November 2000
October 2000
September 2000
August 2000


JiscMail is a Jisc service.

View our service policies at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/ and Jisc's privacy policy at https://www.jisc.ac.uk/website/privacy-notice

For help and support help@jisc.ac.uk

Secured by F-Secure Anti-Virus CataList Email List Search Powered by the LISTSERV Email List Manager