Lightweight digital mapping tools and methods

On Tuesday June 11, 2024, Historic England, The Open University, and The Pelagios Network will be hosting a workshop on digital tools, methods and infrastructure in academia, cultural heritage, and the creative industries. Our focus will be on lightweight tools that anybody can use to enrich place data, make maps, and link information to shed new light on texts, objects, and databases.

In particular, we will be showcasing tools that are community maintained and supported. This will include the launch of new modular Recogito annotation tool, a hands-on tutorial on using Peripleo to build your own maps of things related to place, and a demonstration of Historic England’s implementation of Arches discussion of Cambridge University’s use of Arches. In addition to exploring real-life use cases in the wild, the workshop will encourage discussion of issues relating to public engagement and citizen science; interoperability and infrastructure; and community development and sustainability.

We look forward to seeing you there or online.

Programme

This programme is subject to change due to transport and availability. Some speakers may be on Teams.

Session 1, 10.30 - 11.30: Introduction, Context, Questions

• 10.30 - 10:50: Elton Barker/Maria Aristeidou - Welcome to all (e.g., academia, GLAMs, third sector, policy makers) A brief history of the OU and ‘open societal challenges”, where Pelagios meets citizen science
• 10.50 - 11:10: Daniel Pett - demoing Peripleo
• 11:10 - 11:30: Q&A

Session 2, 11.30 - 13.15: punk annotation. Or how to enrich collection metadata yourself

• 11:30 - 11:45: Elton Barker - a brief history of Recogito
• 11:45 - 12:00: Sarah Middle - demoing the new Recogito for mapping object itineraries
• 12:00 - 12:15: Junaid Abdul Jabbar (McDonald Institute, Cambridge University) - MAHSA Arches
• 12:15 - 12:30: Q&A
• 12:30 - 12:45: Daniel Pett - Summary & Provocation

12:45 - 13:15: Lunch

Sandwiches on the roof terrace if the weather is amenable.

Session 3, 13.15 - 13.35: Introducing citizen science

• 13:15 - 13:30: Maria Aristeidou/Sarah Alcock - analytics in online space
• 13:30 - 13:35: Q&A

Session 4, 13:35 - 14:20: Pelagios Network Partners

• 13:35 - 13:50: Karl Grossner - The World Historical Gazetteer
• 13.50 - 14:05: Gethin Rees (The British Library) - Peripleo
• 14:05 - 14:20: Q&A and how to join the network

14:20 - 14.30: Break

Session 5, 14:30 - 15.10: Parallel events (a) user testing; (b) guest speakers

• 14:30 and 14:50 : Maria Aristeidou/Sarah Alcock/Sarah Middle - Recogito hands-on activities for physical attendees (library area)
• 14:30 - 14:40: Amara Thornton (School of Advanced Study, University of London) Beyond Notability (main room/Teams)
• 14:40 - 14:50: Petr Pridal - MapTiler/ TimeMap
• 14:50 - 15:00: Mark Harrison (Historic England) - Heritage Crime

Session 6, 15:10 - 16:00: Plenary

Post workshop drinks at a local pub, if people wish to go.

Videos from Teams

We have captured video footage of nearly all the speakers from this event via the live MicroSoft Teams call. These are a little rough and ready, but we hope they will be useful for those who could not attend. Amara Thornton’s has some corruption and will be added if possible. We may clean these up slightly and fix the subtitles and transcriptions where glaring errors exist.

To open the transcription for any of these videos, open on YouTube rather than the embed and click on the description and then show transcript.

Transcripts, links and Teams chat files

• Transcript - ODT file, not edited
• Chat transcript - Google Doc
• URLS mentioned - Google Doc