I should have said that we are completely prohibited from spending lottery
money BUYING IPRs, and we are also supposed not to digitise anything which
has already been digitised by anybody else, even if their version is only
available at extortionate cost -- so my question was really about, for
example, transcriptions made by academic projects whose creators were happy
to see their work made freely available via our system (they would of
course be acknowledged).
One general comment is that the authors of late 19th century gazetteers
seem to have very extensively plagiarised one another, so work digitising
additional ones from the same period as the Imperial Gazetteer would create
an awful lot of duplicated information.
Al Margary's list just circulated includes Groome's Gazetteer, whose first
edition text we HAVE digitised (collaborating with the Gazetteer for
Scotland project in Edinburgh, with the OCR work done by the Centre for
Data Digitisation and Analysis in Belfast) -- and NB what we have created
is a full text transcription, with a fair amount of manual effort put into
spell checking and general tidying up, NOT PDFs which combine page images
plus some recognised words that hopefully help searching. Our demo system
is limited to the Isle of Wight, but already demonstrates full text
searching plus linkage to other sources. Touch wood, we will also be able
to demonstrate linkage to historic maps by around the end of the month:
www.gbhgis.org/demo_gaz.htm
Humphrey Southall
At 13:51 07/03/2003 -0800, you wrote:
>Samuel Lewis' massive 1842 Topographical Dictionaries of England
>(4 vols), Wales (2 vols), Scotland (1 vol), and Ireland (1 vol)
>are available as PDF documents (that is, page images that are
>barely searchable) on a total of four CD-ROMs--US$19.95 per
>title--from Quintin Publications in Pawtucket, Rhode Island:
>http://www.quintinpublications.com/cdgaz.html
>
>Also available for UK and Ireland:
>
>Cassell's Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland . Being A
>Complete Topographical Dictionary of the United Kingdom with
>Numerous Illustrations and Sixty Maps. Six volumes, 2,840 pages,
>Originally printed 1900.
>
>The Comprehensive Gazetteer of England and Wales : Edited by
>J.H.F. Brabner, F.R.G.S. Printed in 1880 (2000 Reprint), London,
>England. 2244 pages. Ninety-five full-color county maps and
>illustrations accompany this highly detailed gazetteer which
>provides a comprehensive listing of every conceivable
>geographically named location in England and Wales. In addition
>to location, most listings include historical and economic
>facts.
>
>Nearly 200,000 geographical locations are listed. Features
>included are: barony, borough, burgh, chapelry, civil-parish,
>ecclesiastical parish, hamlet, liberty, market town, parish,
>quoad sacra parish, riding, tithing, townland and townships.
>Each entry may contain: location, population, distance from
>nearest rail station, distance from either London or Dublin,
>soil conditions, natural resources, good manufactured, names of
>churches, monuments, and historical tidbits. More than 60 full
>color maps illustrate these volumes.
>
>Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland. Francis Groome. 6 volumes
>(1896). 1534 pages. Fully Text Searchable. Contains full color
>maps for every county in Scotland as well as several area maps
>(Firth of Forth, etc) and several town plans.
>
>The Gazetteer of Scotland. Reverend John Wilson. 1882.
>Edinburgh, Scotland. 475 pages.
>
>Atlas and Cyclopedia of Ireland. New York, Murphy & McCarthy,
>Publishers, 1900.
>
>Prices range from US$19.95 to $39.95 per title.
>
>Al Magary
====================================
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.gbhgis.org
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