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UID:pretalx-spathum24-GTC3EW@pretalx.com
DTSTART;TZID=CET:20240925T173000
DTEND;TZID=CET:20240925T180000
DESCRIPTION:Unlocking archives demands more than words alone. In the case o
 f the paper archives of the Dutch East India Company (VOC)\, localizing to
 ponyms through (historical) maps facilitates the interpretation of the gia
 nt collection of letters\, reports\, and ledgers. These maps can act as in
 terpreters\, bridging the gap between past and present place names (often 
 changed by succeeding colonial regimes\, independence\, or other historica
 l events) and revealing how cartographers and their commissioners perceive
 d and exploited bodies of land and water. By taking information from maps 
 into account\, one might gain a richer understanding of the spatial contex
 t in written archives\, moving beyond the mere textual representation of p
 eople\, places and what happened to them. \n\nAt the GLOBALISE project\,[1
 ] funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO)\, we aim to make textual arch
 ives of the VOC (covering the period 1605-1799) searchable and _researchab
 le_ by recognizing handwritten text on almost 5M scans\, and by annotating
  and identifying entities such as persons\, places\, and polities\, includ
 ing the events they were part of. This big textual corpus is the starting 
 point for computer-assisted research into the history of Dutch colonizatio
 n as seen from the perspective of the VOC. \n\nTo improve our understandin
 g of the colonial context\, we have complemented our textual corpus by int
 erlinking it with a visual counterpart: a corpus of colonial maps. In our 
 presentation\, we will present a pilot that involves a three-layered enric
 hment of maps sourced from two collections (1584-1813) of the Dutch Nation
 al Archives\, and that we intend to develop further with more maps from ot
 her collections and archives\, such as the Royal Netherlands Institute of 
 Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (Leiden) and the Allard Pierson Muse
 um (Amsterdam).[2]\n\nAhead of the enrichment steps\, we convert each of t
 he collection's Encoded Archival Description (EAD) files to a IIIF Collect
 ion (with subcollections and manifests\, cf. the IIIF Presentation API[3])
  to replicate their archival hierarchy and context. Next\, we supplement t
 hese IIIF Collections with different kinds of (web) annotations\, grouped 
 by purpose in separate layers. \nIn our first enrichment layer\, we try to
  link the early modern map view of colonies and other territories to a mod
 ern map through the Allmaps tool (https://allmaps.org/)\, which adds IIIF 
 Georeference Extension[4] annotations. This layer helps to bridge the hist
 orical representation of a place with its contemporary one\, and illustrat
 es how the area was seen through the colonial lens:a high level of detail 
 on a large scale likely means that the area was considered of great import
 ance\, and that there was considerable colonial influence. \n\nThe second 
 layer is about named places. By applying a text spotter model\, we automat
 ically extract labels from the maps\,[5] allowing us to run these through 
 a handwritten-text recognition model to transcribe the labels\,[6] and con
 nect the labels to the places in our written corpus by linking them to our
  knowledge graph\, external thesauri\, and other gazetteers. \nFinally\, t
 he third layer deals with geographic iconography. We have prepared a sampl
 e training set for usage in a segmentation model to annotate and classify 
 icons and symbols on the maps\, such as a Dutch flag representing a Dutch 
 settlement\, or trees to signify plantations and colonial exploitation. Th
 is layer is crucial for both comprehending the Dutch colonial worldview an
 d tracing its evolution in the early modern era.\n\nEach of these layers b
 rings in a specific type of interpretation that can be viewed independentl
 y\, or can be analyzed in combination with other enrichments. For instance
 \, toponyms on maps can be linked to their corresponding icons. For conven
 ience and maximum interoperability\, we aggregate a pointer to the image i
 tself\, its metadata\, and our enrichments in a single IIIF Manifest\, whi
 ch exposes all enrichments (ours and potentially those of others)\, creati
 ng a unified container for this layered information. It is this container 
 that can potentially be called upon in the project's research environment 
 to make it easier for a researcher to get a grip on the historical materia
 l as it provides additional aid for interpretation: analyzing the textual 
 materials and these three layers together\, and through time\, paints a mu
 ltifaceted picture of the colonizer's world perception. From commissioned 
 maps to embedded references\, this combined analysis unlocks crucial conte
 xt for interpreting the early modern world through the colonizer's lens.\n
 \nReferences\n- Li\, Z.\, Chiang\, Y. Y.\, Tavakkol\, S.\, Shbita\, B.\, U
 hl\, J. H.\, Leyk\, S.\, & Knoblock\, C. A. (2020). An automatic approach 
 for generating rich\, linked geo-metadata from historical map images. In _
 Proceedings of the 26th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge D
 iscovery & Data Mining_ (3290-3298).\n- Petram\, L.\, & van Rossum\, M. (2
 022). Transforming historical research practices–a digital infrastructur
 e for the VOC archives (GLOBALISE). _International journal of maritime his
 tory_\, 34(3)\, 494-502.\n\n________________\n[1] Petram and Van Rossum (2
 022)\, see also: https://globalise.huygens.knaw.nl/ \n[2] The Leupe collec
 tion of foreign maps (1584-1813\, 4.VEL & 4.VELH). See https://www.nationa
 alarchief.nl/onderzoeken/archief/4.VEL & https://www.nationaalarchief.nl/o
 nderzoeken/archief/4.VELH respectively. \n[3] https://iiif.io/api/presenta
 tion/3.0/\n[4] https://iiif.io/api/extension/georef/ \n[5] We use the mode
 l created by Li et al. (2020) and a slightly modified version of their pip
 eline. See: https://github.com/machines-reading-maps/map-kurator \n[6] An 
 open-source HTR pipeline has been developed by the KNAW Humanities Cluster
 \, Amsterdam: https://github.com/knaw-huc/loghi
DTSTAMP:20260317T000216Z
LOCATION:MG1/02.05
SUMMARY:Click\, See\, Explore: A Multimodal Approach to Better Understand t
 he Early Modern Colonial World through Old Maps - Leon van Wissen\, Lodewi
 jk Petram
URL:https://pretalx.com/spathum24/talk/GTC3EW/
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