There have been past postings on this list about the work my project, the
Great Britain Historical GIS, has been doing to create a computerised
place-name authority list covering Britain. After a bumpy couple of weeks
after our launch in October, the site has now been working pretty reliably
for a couple of months and we are now looking for some feedback:
www.VisionOfBritain.org.uk
Overall usage has been high, but we do not know much about HOW people are
using the site.
(1) The site contains most of the information in Youngs' Local
Administrative Units of England (see below for what is missing), plus
enhanced versions of Melville Richards' work on Wales and the Scottish
Archives Network (SCAN)'s gazetteer of Scottish counties, burghs and
parishes. Has anyone actually tried using our web site instead of one of
those name authorities? How did it go?
(2) Our lottery funding meant that the more accessible parts of the site
had to be aimed at a more general audience. In particular, the home page
is designed for uses wanting information about the history of
"places". How much of a problem is having to go to "expert search" for
Youngs-type information?
(3) Up to now, our main aim on the "name authority" side has been to create
computerised equivalents to the authorities specified by the National
Council on Archives, and that means that coverage is limited to legally
defined administrative units. Adding "populated places", i.e. hamlets that
never gave their names even to a manor or township is not impossible,
although it is obviously harder to collate sources and, especially,
identifying preferred forms of names. How useful would this be?
(4) We had to give priority to units listed in the statistical sources that
form another major part of the site, which meant we currently cover some
kinds of unit that are not listed by Youngs (e.g. Registration
sub-Districts) but left out others. We have some money to enhance our
coverage of ecclesiastical units -- all the parishes are there, but not the
higher-level units -- and have applied for funding to work on Parliamentary
Constituencies. This would still leave a few kinds of unit missing, like
Petty Session Divisions. Which kinds of missing unit types should we
prioritise?
(5) What else could we do to make the Vision of Britain site better, or
easier to use?
Thanks in advance for any comments you can give us.
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: 0796 808 5454
Web site: http://www.VisionOfBritain.org.uk
About us: http://www.gbhgis.org
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