AddressingHistory
April-September, 2010, funded by the JISC Digitisation and e-Content programme.
AddressingHistory engages the community through an online tool which accesses three eras of Edinburgh mapping and Post Office Directories (1784-5; 1865; 1905-6). The technologies demonstrated are scalable to the full collection of digitised materials which include 400 Post Office Directories and associated maps covering the whole of Scotland.
The geo-coding web tool and Application Programming Interface (API) are delivered by EDINA in partnership with the National Library of Scotland (NLS) using licence free geo-referenced maps and historical Scottish Post Office Directories (PODs) digitised by the NLS. The tool and API are also sympathetic to the online research resources developed by the Visualising Urban Geography project based at the University of Edinburgh in conjunction with the National Library of Scotland.
The online tool is built around Web 2.0 principles to enable a broad spectrum of users, both within and outwith academia (particularly local history groups and genealogists), to combine and enhance both mapping and directory data and allow opportunities for original research that utilises the rich contextual perspective. The associated APIs will exploit the value-added content of the PODs by allowing search by profession, surname, street name and spatial bounding box.
Contact
More information
- AddressingHistory blog
- Visualising Urban Geography project
- JISC Digitisation and e-Content programme
This article was published on Sep 17, 2010