Maps of a Nation? The Digitized Ordnance Survey for New Historical Research. (17th April 2021)
- Record Type:
- Journal Article
- Title:
- Maps of a Nation? The Digitized Ordnance Survey for New Historical Research. (17th April 2021)
- Main Title:
- Maps of a Nation? The Digitized Ordnance Survey for New Historical Research
- Authors:
- Hosseini, Kasra
McDonough, Katherine
van Strien, Daniel
Vane, Olivia
Wilson, Daniel C S - Abstract:
- Abstract: Although the Ordnance Survey has itself been the subject of historical research, scholars have not systematically used its maps as primary sources of information. This is partly for disciplinary reasons and partly for the technical reason that high-quality maps have not until recently been available digitally, geo-referenced, and in color. A final, and crucial, addition has been the creation of item-level metadata which allows map collections to become corpora which can for the first time be interrogated en masse as source material. By applying new Computer Vision methods leveraging machine learning, we outline a research pipeline for working with thousands (rather than a handful) of maps at once, which enables new forms of historical inquiry based on spatial analysis. Our 'patchwork method' draws on the longstanding desire to adopt an overall or 'complete' view of a territory, and in so doing highlights certain parallels between the situation faced by today's users of digitized maps, and a similar inflexion point faced by their predecessors in the nineteenth century, as the project to map the nation approached a form of completion.
- Is Part Of:
- Journal of Victorian culture. Volume 26:Number 2(2021)
- Journal:
- Journal of Victorian culture
- Issue:
- Volume 26:Number 2(2021)
- Issue Display:
- Volume 26, Issue 2 (2021)
- Year:
- 2021
- Volume:
- 26
- Issue:
- 2
- Issue Sort Value:
- 2021-0026-0002-0000
- Page Start:
- 284
- Page End:
- 299
- Publication Date:
- 2021-04-17
- Subjects:
- ordnance survey -- maps -- computer vision -- british history -- spatial history -- digital humanities -- victorian studies
Culture -- History -- 19th century -- Periodicals
306.09034 - Journal URLs:
- http://www.tandfonline.com/ ↗
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_victorian_culture ↗
https://academic.oup.com/jvc ↗
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/rjvc ↗
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/13555502 ↗ - DOI:
- 10.1093/jvcult/vcab009 ↗
- Languages:
- English
- ISSNs:
- 1355-5502
- Deposit Type:
- Legaldeposit
- View Content:
- Available online (eLD content is only available in our Reading Rooms) ↗
- Physical Locations:
- British Library DSC - BLDSS-3PM
British Library HMNTS - ELD Digital store - Ingest File:
- 23272.xml