BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//pretalx//pretalx.com//spathum24//speaker//UXC9GP BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:CET BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:20001029T040000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=10 TZNAME:CET TZOFFSETFROM:+0200 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:20000326T030000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=3 TZNAME:CEST TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0200 END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT UID:pretalx-spathum24-AWASUW@pretalx.com DTSTART;TZID=CET:20240926T153000 DTEND;TZID=CET:20240926T160000 DESCRIPTION:This paper describes the ongoing creation from historical prima ry sources of “EMEW”\, an online Gazetteer of Early Modern England & W ales. The speaker is Technical Director of the World Historical Gazetteer\ , and was (as an early modern historian) co-leader of a public history pro ject\, “Viae Regiae”\, which crowd-sourced the transcription and geolo cation of various early modern maps and texts. EMEW is intended as both a qualitative and a quantitative resource for economic and transport histori ans interested in the spatial development and decline of commercial networ ks over time. The paper gives a detailed account of the diverse computatio nal processes and tools employed in the preparation of the various Linked Open (Geo)Datasets which will constitute EMEW. \n\nAt the core of EMEW wil l be a digital rendition of “Index Villaris”\, a list of some 24\,000 place names first published by John Adams in 1680\, and the first gazettee r of England and Wales to attempt the inclusion of geo-coordinates. The AI -based transcription tool “Transkribus” was first trained to recognise the idiosyncrasies and symbology of the published source. The resulting t ranscript was then corrected manually\, and GIS techniques were used to tr ansform Adams’ coordinate reference system (CRS)\, aligning the place na mes more closely with their known modern locations. The entire dataset was then processed using “Locolligo”\, a tool developed by the speaker fo r a project based at the British Library\, which facilitates the geospatia l linking of datasets. Index Villaris place names were thereby linked as f ar as possible to Wikidata\, to Open Street Map (OSM) road nodes\, and to place names from the GB1900 Gazetteer. The GB1900 Gazetteer is itself a cr owd-sourced dataset comprising all of the textual content of the Ordnance Survey six-inch to the mile maps of England\, Scotland and Wales\, dating from 1888-1913\, and amounting to some 2.5 million names.\n\nSupplementing Index Villaris\, EMEW will include datasets derived by Viae Regiae volunt eers from Christopher Saxton’s county maps (published in the 1570s) and from records of John Leland’s travels in the 1530s. These were prepared online collaboratively using “Recogito”\, a geolocation and transcript ion tool that employs IIIF for serving both maps and texts.\n\nEMEW is to be bolstered further by the inclusion of a dataset which geolocates all of the monasteries closed during the English Reformation\, adding temporo-sp atial dimensions to any study of this period of especially-significant eco nomic upheaval. A dataset of markets and fairs in England and Wales\, orig inally covering the period to 1516\, is being extended to 1900 through tra ditional archival research\, exploring Crown patents and court records hel d at the UK National Archives. Yet another dataset originating in a War Of fice survey of accommodation and stabling made in 1686 will add a qualitat ive proxy-dimension to the market towns recorded in Index Villaris six yea rs earlier. Together\, these datasets will help with charting the changing economic status of both localities and regions.\n\nThe paper will also de scribe the speaker’s work on “desCartes”\, a computational workflow which employs AI\, computer vision technologies\, and Python notebooks to attempt the extraction of road vectors from historical maps. Using a combi nation of random forest and convolutional neural networks for pixel classi fication\, the initial aim is to produce a vector road map from the same s et of Ordnance Survey maps as was used to produce the textual data of GB19 00\, which were surveyed before the commencement of major road-building pr ogrammes. Through further research identifying roads built following the l egally-authorised compulsory purchase of land or those created by the docu mented process of enclosure\, this vector road map will form the basis for historical regression. Ultimately\, it is hoped that a digital map will b e produced representing speculatively the development of the road network of England and Wales since 1540\, as both a driver and indicator of histor ical economic development.\n\nWorld Historical Gazetteer (WHG) provides a collection of content and services that permit world historians\, their st udents\, and the general public to perform spatial and temporal reasoning and visualisation in a data rich environment\, at local\, national\, globa l and trans-regional scales. Among the array of WHG services is the “Dat aset Collection”\, which allows users to group together datasets which s hare a common theme. This paper concludes with an account of how this feat ure is being used to create EMEW.\n\nMany of the key themes of the 5th Spa tial Humanities Conference are addressed by this paper. In particular\, it highlights the use of gazetteers\, artificial intelligence (computer visi on and deep learning)\, spatial explorations of narratives\, GIS and spati al statistical analysis\, spatial connections and networks\, linking maps and texts\, geospatial data enrichment and annotation\, historical maps an d georeferencing\, Linked Open (Geo)Data\, IIIF applications\, labs notebo oks\, workflows and infrastructure\, data mining\, visualisation\, and the challenges of geolocation. DTSTAMP:20260315T180930Z LOCATION:MG2 01.10 SUMMARY:EMEW: Building a Gazetteer of Early Modern England & Wales - Stephe n Gadd URL:https://pretalx.com/spathum24/talk/AWASUW/ END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR