JISC

This project is part of the Enhancing JISC data services for Teaching and Learning project cluster in this particular programme. The main focus of projects in this cluster is to improve use of existing JISC owned resources through the JISC data services for learning and teaching.

The aim of the Geo-X-walk Gazetteer Project (Phase 1) was to assess the feasibility of developing and providing an online, Z39.50 compliant, fast, scalable and extensible British and Irish gazetteer service, which would play a crucial role in supporting geographic searching in the Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER). This was a joint project between EDINA (Data Library, University of Edinburgh) and the History Data Service (UK Data Archive, University of Essex). MIMAS and the Archaeology Data Service were involved in an advisory capacity.

A gazetteer is a list of place names together with their associated geographic location. The geographic location can be expressed in several ways, for example, as latitude and longitude co-ordinates, or simply as another geographical place name which contains this particular place, such as a county or a country.

The project looked at the use of a gazetteer service (a network-addressable middle-ware server) to support other information services within the DNER. It could do this in two ways by:

• supporting geographic searching;
• and assisting in the geographic indexing of information resources.

As the project progressed it became clear that there is also a requirement for it to act as a general reference source about places and features in the UK and Ireland.

The Geo-X-walk Gazetteer should provide researchers and teaching staff with access to an on-line gazetteer for reference and cataloguing purposes. The gazetteer service will also act as a middleware server for other information services which use geographic searching.

This gazetteer will be more than a list of place names and their geographic coordinates. It will also classify features into types, e.g. city, river, and will store an appropriate spatial  'footprint' against each feature: settlements are represented as areas, rivers as lines and so on. It then becomes possible to 'crosswalk' across geographies enabling answers to the following types of queries:

• Where is Ormskirk and what major towns are within 50 miles of it?
• Through which counties does the river Severn flow?
• Which police force areas cover southwest England?

A wide variety of parties both inside and outside UK academia have expressed an interest in the project.

The project has links with the National Science Foundation funded Alexandria Digital Library (ADL) project in the USA. Based at the University of California at Santa Barbara, this working digital library holds collections of geographically referenced materials and services for accessing them. An intrinsic part of the ADL project is the development of a gazetteer to facilitate querying of their database.

See full documentation for Phase I of the GeoXwalk project

Aims and Objectives

The central aims of the project are:

• To develop a geo-spatial gazetteer service suitable for extension to full service
• To consider how the gazetteer data could be made available as a shared service as part of the DNER Information Environment
• Promote the possibilities of a fully functioning service and act as a proof of concept

The key objectives are to:

• Elicit the detailed requirements for a gazetteer service
• Involve organisations outside UK academia in the development of a gazetteer service demonstrator. These include the British Library, Ordnance Survey, Office for National Statistics, Public Archives, Place Name Societies, English Heritage, Royal Scottish Geographical Society , SCRAN and other appropriate bodies
• Build a demonstrator focussing on near-contemporary data which should illustrate the following:
  • The use of a gazetteer to enhance the geographic searching of one or more existing DNER services
  • The use of a gazetteer to assist in the semi-automatic geographic indexing of descriptions of DNER resources
  • Reference use through the provision of a command driven web-based interface, to show the types of queries that could be answered by a well-populated service
• Investigate:
  • The issues involved in making the gazetteer a Z39.50 target
  • SOAP, the Simple Object Access Protocol (web services) as an access mechanism
  • The utility and usability of the ADL Gazetteer Content Standard
  • Questions about performance and scalability of the service
  • The level of interest and commitment of interested parties outside tertiary education
  • The costs involved in populating the gazetteer, linking the data and quality assuring the data
• Negotiate with data owners to use the key core datasets required to populate the gazetteer. Any negotiations should include agreement in principle to allow wider educational access in the future and unified licensing arrangements will be considered
• Suggest ways in which data can be kept up-to date, and what kind of quality assurance on data input will be required, including the possibilities of web based interfaces for on-line updating
• Carry out focus groups to assess the needs of the stakeholders for a full gazetteer service and promote the possibilities of a fully functioning service

Project design

This phase of the project is essentially a feasibility study during which the various options for implementing a service are explored and technical and organisational issues are investigated. Doing so will provide a clear understanding of the issues involved and lead to, in the latter part of this phase, the production of an architecture, functional specification and implementation plan for the service.

Outputs

The key deliverables of the project will be:

• A functioning scalable demonstrator gazetteer service that has the potential to be fully integrated into the DNER Information Environment
• A report on who the relevant stakeholders are and how the needs of the user group will be met