On the Trail of Spatial Humanities

Historical Materials and Geographic Information
Systems for Digital Humanities Projects
6 Nov 2015

Merrick Lex Berman
Center for Geographical Analysis
Harvard University

Goals of Digital Humanities- access to cultural / historical information- tools to find, browse, mashup, query, map, and analyze this info
- communicate the resources, topics, and findings of digital scholarship- utilize digital resources and methods for teaching and learning- connect communities (across disciplines, across sectors, and the public )Goals of Digital Humanities- access to cultural / historical information- tools to find, browse, mashup, query, map, and analyze this info
- communicate the resources, topics, and findings of digital scholarship- utilize digital resources and methods for teaching and learning- connect communities (across disciplines, across sectors, and the public )movement fromintroverted projects by individual scholars ->to collaborative cross-disciplinary projects ->to exposing data and methods to wider academic communities & the public.

Challenes in Digital Humanities
how to bridge the gaps between(a) primary sources(b) scholars with domain expertise(c) technical implementations

http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub151/pub151.pdf

Challenes in Digital Humanities
how to bridge the gaps between(a) primary sources(b) scholars with domain expertise(c) technical implementations
large investement up front for organizing, digitizing, transcribing, annotating
historical texts, images, facts and figures so they become accessible to thescholarly community.
further development is needed to make the digital resources useful foranalysis, and to expose them, or at least their metadata, in machine readable
formats, which enables integration and re-use across the broader communityof potential users.

Challenes in Digital Humanities
how to bridge the gaps between(a) primary sources(b) scholars with domain expertise(c) technical implementations
large investement up front for organizing, digitizing, transcribing, annotating
historical texts, images, facts and figures so they become accessible to thescholarly community.
further development is needed to make the digital resources useful foranalysis, and to expose them, or at least their metadata, in machine readable
formats, which enables integration and re-use across the broader communityof potential users.
From raw data -> well organized information -> analysis -> knowledge

Historical Research ~ Spatial Humanities
History(a) evidence(b) “facts” (attestations)(c) people, places, events(d) narratives(e) historiography
geographic & temporal scale

Historical Research ~ Spatial Humanities
History

Geographic Information Systems(a) evidence(b) “facts” (attestations)(c) people, places, events(d) narratives(e) historiography(a) geodata (spatial objects)(b) “features” (attestations)(c) locations, areas, networks(d) spatial relations (adjacency)(e) networks, morphology

geographic & temporal scale

geographic & temporal scale

Historical Research ~ Spatial Humanities
History

Geographic Information Systems(a) evidence(b) “facts” (attestations)(c) people, places, events(d) narratives(e) historiography(a) geodata (spatial objects)(b) “features” (attestations)(c) locations, areas, networks(d) spatial relations (adjacency)(e) networks, morphology

geographic & temporal scale

geographic & temporal scale

Spatial Humanities
textual analysis
description
world-building

visualization
browsing contentsynthesis

spatial analysis
delineation
map-making

Vector and Raster (Grid) Formats

Spatial Objects relate to Attributes

Symbolization of numerical classes

Lattices and grids

Classified raster data with hillshadingWhat software is used for GIS?
Desktop GIS
ArcMap
QGIS
GoogleEarth

Webmaps
GoogleMaps APIWorldmap
LeafletStatistical Packages
RStataSpss

Desktop GIS compared to webmaps

Google Maps compared to desktop GISProprietary basemaps vs. Public data

GIS + webmaps + collaboration = WorldMap

Creating a collaborative project on WorldMap

Rectifying a scanned map using Warper

http://warp.worldmap.harvard.edu/

Export as WMS using WarperWarped map is added to WorldMap projectMapping Objects from Digital Collections

Collect Metadata, Create Feature

how to video

GIS Examples: Vision of Britain

GIS Examples: CHGIS(a) based on changing administrative divisions over time(b) contains relationships between administrative units(c) can be used to model change over time as a network

Buddhist Temples Index

Digitizing Source Text

Geocoding Locations in Source Text

Mapping the Geocoded Points

Distribution of the Geocoded Buddhist Sites

Revealing Bias in SourcesGeoprocessing - Heatmap

GIS Examples: ORBIS Roman NetworkMing Dynasty Courier Routes & Post Offices

http://maps.cga.harvard.edu/chinapostoffice/Japanese Historical GIS Examples

Edo Nagoya GIS
Mizoguchi

Historical Maps
David Rumsey

Meiji GIS
Murayama

Skinner Meiji
Skinner

Agricultural History GISNIAESTokugawa GIS
BermanCastle Explorer
Dan O’Grady

Hiroshi Kawaguchi Progress in Historical GIS in JapanTokyo Urban History
Loren Siebert

Kyoto Historical Photos
Kondo / Yano / et allinks to various Japan HGIS resources

The Future of Spatial Humanities
movement away from Creation of large GIS databases
 Creation of “one-off” datasets for single projects
 Creation of custom site-specific or dataset-specific platforms

The Future of Spatial Humanities
movement away from Creation of large GIS databases
 Creation of “one-off” datasets for single projects
 Creation of custom site-specific or dataset-specific platforms
Moving toward Open platforms with multiple access methods (UIs, APIs, RDF)
 Feeds and web-services that are easy to integrate or mash-up
 Queries based on spatial and temporal extents + space timevisualizations
 Curation of selected data for analysis, annotations & markup by experts

Examplars: Spatial History ProjectExamplars: Addressing History

Examplars: VGI Volunteer Geo Information

http://whaling.oldweather.org/#/

http://buildinginspector.nypl.org/

Open Data is the new paradigm

OpenStreetMap
GeoFabrik downloads

OpenGeoportal

Working demonstration projects

http://worldmap.harvard.edu/maps/manchukuo

http://maps.cga.harvard.edu/ncc/