A University of Southampton led project, exploring how people of antiquity viewed the geography of the ancient world, has been backed by $50,000 of funding from Google, Inc. via its Digital Humanities Awards Program.
Google Ancient Places (GAP) is developing a Web application which allows users to choose a classical text or book (500BC - 500AD) and then search for references to ancient places within it, presenting the results in a user-friendly interface.
GAP uses specialist software to identify where and how often places are mentioned within a text, displaying references to the locations and plotting results on a map using an independent digital gazetteer (Pleiades).
Project leader, and Southampton Digital Humanities specialist, Dr Leif Isaksen explains, "A GAP user can not only see how an author's narrative moves from place-to-place, but also how a town or city's relative importance varies throughout a historical text. "We hope it will interest scholars and users with a general interest in antiquity alike."
GAP is an international collaborative research project between the University of Southampton (Dr Leif Isaksen), The Open University (Dr Elton Barker), the University of Edinburgh (Dr Kate Byrne), University of California, Berkeley (Dr Eric Kansa) and independent developer Nick Rabinowitz. This Digital Humanities Research Grant is the second round of funding GAP has received from the Google Research Awards Program, and will allow the team to expand their project to a wider variety of books and texts.
Dr Isaksen comments, "We intend to expand the scope of the material we are working with, increasing the volume of and variety of the texts, so not just factual texts but also poetry and fiction."
In addition, GAP is part of a larger network of open data on antiquity called Pelagios, which is made up of several similar online projects. By integrating GAP with this network, the researchers hope to give users access to more varied types of data, such as archaeological artefacts or historical documents.
Open University classicist, Dr Elton Barker says, "Previous projects have tended to be closed silos of information and that has reinforced barriers between disciplines. By linking our data to other archaeological and classical resources it becomes possible to navigate directly between them, making it easier to look at ancient texts and artefacts in their spatial, cultural and literary context."
To explore Google Ancient Places, please visit: http://googleancientplaces.wordpress.com/gapvis/ using an up-to-date version of your browser.
Notes for editors:
1) For more information about Google Ancient Places: http://googleancientplaces.wordpress.com/about/
2) For more information about Google: http://www.google.co.uk/about/
3) For more information about Pleiades and Pelagios:
http://pleiades.stoa.org/
http://pelagios-project.blogspot.com/p/about.html
4) The University of Southampton is a leading UK teaching and research institution with a global reputation for leading-edge research and scholarship across a wide range of subjects in engineering, science, social sciences health and humanities. Its Research Institute for Industry is a cutting-edge applied research and consultancy unit able to support and collaborate with industry.
With over 23,000 students, around 5000 staff, and an annual turnover well in excess of £435 million, the University of Southampton is acknowledged as one of the country's top institutions for engineering, computer science and medicine. We combine academic excellence with an innovative and entrepreneurial approach to research, supporting a culture that engages and challenges students and staff in their pursuit of learning.
The University is also home to a number of world-leading research centres including the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research, the Optoelectronics Research Centre, the Institute for Life Sciences, the Web Science Trust and Doctoral training Centre, the Centre for the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease, the Southampton Statistical Sciences Research Institute and is a partner of the National Oceanography Centre at the Southampton waterfront campus. www.southampton.ac.uk
5) For more information about Humanities at Southampton: http://www.southampton.ac.uk/humanities/
6) For more information about the Google Ancient Places partners:
Classical Studies at the Open University: http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/classical-studies/index.shtml
Language Technology Group at the University of Edinburgh: http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/
iSchool at the University of California, Berkeley: http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/
Nick Rabinowitz:
http://www.nickrabinowitz.com/