AddressingHistory – Tracing the Past

Stuart MacdonaldAddressingHistory Project Manager

Nicola OsborneProject Officer & EDINA Social Media Officer

EDINA & Data Library

AddressingHistory Launch - National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh - 17 November 2010

• JISC-funded Community Content project

• 6 months (April 2010 – September 2010)

• Partner with NLS

• Advisory Board

CC image courtesy of Flickr – http://www.flickr.com/photos/karenhorton/3970883720/

• To create an online crowdsourcing tool which will combine data from digitised historical Scottish Post Office Directories (PODs) with contemporaneous historical maps

CC image courtesy of Flickr – http://www.flickr.com/photos/karenhorton/4418947864/

Similar to Australian Historic Newspapers project provided by National Library of Australia where members of the public correct and improve OCR’d text of old newspapers

• Project will focus on 3 vols. of Edinburgh PODs: 1784-5; 1865; 1905-6

• Historic maps geo-referenced by NLS

• PODs digitised by NLS in conjunction with the Internet Archive

• Public domain

CC image courtesy of Flickr – http://www.flickr.com/photos/karenhorton/4477409137/

CC image courtesy of Flickr – http://www.flickr.com/photos/karenhorton/4463849542/in/set-72157613482977550//

• Upon registration the tool will allow ‘the crowd’ to geo-reference a POD entry by moving a ‘map pin’ on a digitised map

• Facilitates the addition of a grid reference to the OCR’d POD held in an XML database• Geo-coding of POD addresses parsed against Google geo-coder

• Interface has to be easy-to-use for a range of users

• Robust and scalable to accommodate 400 Scottish PODs currently being digitised

CC image courtesy of Flickr – http://www.flickr.com/photos/10413717@N08/2718212938/

• Crowdsourcing of mass geo-coded content

• Mechanism to check user-generated content such as geo-references, names, professions

• Edinburgh Beltane – beacon of partnership & CHSS knowledge transfer office

• Amplification of tool and API via Social Media Channels – Facebook, Google Groups, Twitter, Blog, Flickr

CC image courtesy of Flickr – http://www.flickr.com/photos/karenhorton/4006519613//

• Our Blog has been our hub of activity throughout the project

• We’ve posted items on…

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• Scottish history events and fringe shows• Regular project progress reports• AddressingHistory Preview announcement• Press appearances • And various other items we think you might find interesting…

• We’ve also benefited from some fantastic guest bloggers…

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• Twitter has helped us find fantastic supporters, friends, and feedback

• It’s already led to articles, previewers, recommendations and those fantastic guest bloggers!

We’ve also been making friends on Facebook & encouraging those who Like us to share AddressingHistory!

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• We’ve a few new treats: – a new Flickr account– AddressingHistory badges for

your website or blog– Videos about the project

• We’ve also been having huge fun meeting people in person here, at Beltane events, at CILIPS, OKScotland, RepositoryFringe, IASSIST, RunCoCo, RSC Scotland Web 2 Forum, and Perth 800.

• And we hope you will help us by using and contributing edits to AddressingHistory and, most of all, by helping us keep this community of people and groups passionate about Scottish history to thrive.

Art - Stamp Art - US - LOVE 1977 – CC image by Vintageprintable1: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vintageprintabledotcom/4967209674/

What next?

• Sustainability

• Google Analytics – measure access and usage of API & generation of User Generated Content

• Funding

CC Image by Karen Horton courtesy of Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/karenhorton/4491710248/

AddressingHistory Online Tool & API –http://addressinghistory.edina.ac.uk

NOW LIVE!

THANKING YOU!

Email: addressing.history@ed.ac.uk