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Provider: University of Victoria
Database: The Map of Early Modern London
Content: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
TY - ELEC
A1 - Holmes, Martin
A1 - Landels-Gruenewald, Tye
A1 - Holmes, Martin
A1 - Jenstad, Janelle
ED - Jenstad, Janelle
T1 - Geocode MoEML Locations
T2 - The Map of Early Modern London
ET - 7.0
PY - 2022
DA - 2022/05/05
CY - Victoria
PB - University of Victoria
LA - English
UR - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/geo.htm
UR - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/xml/standalone/geo.xml
ER -
Junior Programmer 2018-2020. Research Associate 2020-2021. Tracey received her PhD from the Department of English at the University of Victoria in the field of Science and Technology Studies. Her research focuses on the
Programmer, 2018-present. Junior Programmer, 2015-2017. Research Assistant, 2014-2017. Joey Takeda was a graduate student at the University of British Columbia in the Department of English (Science and Technology research stream). He completed his BA honours in English (with a minor in Women’s Studies) at the University of Victoria in 2016. His primary research interests included diasporic and indigenous Canadian and American literature, critical theory, cultural studies, and the digital humanities.
Data Manager, 2015-2016. Research Assistant, 2013-2015. Tye completed his undergraduate honours degree in English at the University of Victoria in 2015.
Director of Pedagogy and Outreach, 2015–2020. Associate Project Director, 2015. Assistant Project Director, 2013-2014. MoEML Research Fellow, 2013. Kim McLean-Fiander comes to
Janelle Jenstad is Associate Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director of
Programmer at the University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre (HCMC). Martin ported the MOL project from its original PHP incarnation to a pure eXist database implementation in the fall of 2011. Since then, he has been lead programmer on the project and has also been responsible for maintaining the project schemas. He was a co-applicant on MoEML’s 2012 SSHRC Insight Grant.
Programmer at the University of Humanities Computing and Media Centre (HCMC) who worked on graphics and layout for the site in the fall of 2011.
Surveyor.
St. Paul’s Cathedral was—and remains—an important church in London. In
Greenwich Palace was a popular royal residence among the Tudors, specifically during the pleasant place
. The name
Our editorial and encoding practices are documented in detail in the Praxis section of our website.
s/heand
his/herto
theyand
theirrespectively.
Any place on the surface of the earth can be located in terms of three coordinates: latitude, longitude, and elevation (height above sea level). In most of our work, we are concerned with only the first two, latitude and longitude, because we don’t (currently) envisage any rendering or data processing that would make use of elevation.
Traditionally, latitude and longitude were expressed in degrees, like this:
51°30'49.25"N
0° 5'58.42"W
In modern GIS systems, latitude and longitude are expressed in decimal numbers, which look like this:
-0.098369
51.513557
Coordinates like this are usually comma-separated, like this:
-0.098369,51.513557
-0.098369,51.513557,0
Our geo-location work falls into two phases: discovering the actual location, and then
generating coordinates for that location the form of a
At the moment, historical geo-coordinates are not nearly as readily available as modern-day geo-coordinates. Generally speaking, those who wish to work with historical geographic data are expected to infer geo-coordinates from their own research. We can infer the geo-coordinates of early modern locations from the geo-coordinates of modern administrative boundaries, sites, and structures.
There were three cataclysmic events that changed the face of London:
Despite these events, London’s street layout, administrative boundaries, and property lines have been remarkably stable. Changes to administrative boundaries are well documented, which means we can work backwards from modern boundary maps if necessary. Sometimes building plans and street surveys survive (such as
A good rule of thumb is to start with the earliest map and work forward through time.
The following is a list of resources that you can use to research location geo-coordinates:
Always start with the Agas Map!
The
LAARC is a database of site records from archaeological digs in London. Each site record has been assigned geo-coordinates that correspond with the point where historical evidence of the location was discovered by archaeologists. Site records are searchable via the website’s home page. Note that even though it is possible to search by street name, LAARC provides point-based geo-coordinates for archaeological finds under modern streets, not line-based geo-coordinates for the early modern streets themselves. LAARC usefully lists all the scholarly articles and monographs about a particular dig, from which we can derive further information.
ShaLT maps all the early modern London theatres and provides resources, maps, and suggested walking tours. Each location (exclusively playhouses and related locations) has been assigned geo-coordinates that define where the location existed in Shakespeare’s London (defined as locations
page. We have now added all of the ShaLT coordinates to our playhouse location files.
GeoNames is a global database of geo-coordinates that contains over 100 modern-day locations in the City of London. Locations are searchable by toponym at the website’s home page and visually via the website’s map widget. Note that GeoNames is a modern-day gazetteer. Geo-coordinates for a modern-day location may not perfectly correspond with the location’s early modern predecessor.
Locating London’s Past is a GIS interface that links various seventeenth and eighteenth-century datasets with a georectified version of John Rocque’s
In many cases, you will be unable to find geo-coordinates for a location using the resources listed in the previous section. When this happens, you must use your own research on the location to infer its location on a modern-day online map of London. The following sections describe how to extract geo-coordinates manually for user-selected points, lines, and polygons by first searching for the location using the Vertexer
—a mapping markup tool developed by Nominatim
database, and if you need to generate complex geometries such as MultiLineStrings (for broken streets) or MultiPolygons (for locations which have multiple unconnected shapes) the HCMC World Map for Drawing provides a richer drawing interface. Both the Vertexer and the HCMC map provide exactly the TEI code that you need to insert into the location file.
The open-source OpenStreetMap organization maintains a huge database of locations called Nominatim, and you can search it at using the Vertexer or OpenStreetMap.org. Note that historical locations are not very well represented, and the current coordinates of historical places may not accurately represent their original location. Nevertheless, this is a good starting point when it comes to finding the modern coordinates for a historical place. When you search on the Vertexer, a drop-down list of potential locations will appear. If one of them looks correct, you can place it on the map by clicking on the point icon to the left. If there is already a full geometry for the place in Nominatem, you can click instead on the second icon.
If the place you have found is correct, your next job is to either confirm that existing geometries are correct and acceptable, or draw a new geometry. Often, the Nominatem database will include only a point location, but we would prefer something more precise, so you may wish to draw a polygon instead. To draw a Point, LineString or Polygon, click on the appropriate icon on the right, and start clicking on the map to add points. When you have finished, either click back on the first position (for a Polygon), or double-click the last position (for a LineString).
If you are happy with your shape, click on the Export button (second icon on the right), and a popup box will show the TEI code you need for the location file. Note that you need to click on the TEI option to see the right code.
Modern geographical information is stored right at the beginning of the
That should be all you need to do. Make a note to yourself to check the resulting location page on the MoEML Jenkins site when the next build has completed to see if your map appear as you expect.
When you add a new GeoJSON location, you should document your work by:
You should also cite one or more sources for the information that allowed you to discover
the coordinates, by adding
It is not uncommon for there to be a degree of uncertainty about a location. There are
two types of uncertainty. You may be unsure about the precise coordinates of a place because
the surrounding cityscape has changed significantly. In that case, you would add
HCMC has a World Map for Drawing based on the same OpenStreetMap data. This map allows you to create points, lines or polygons representing a location, and will then generate TEI code which you can then embed directly into the location file you are working on.
When you first go to the site, you will see that the map zooms in on the UVic campus, but if you click on
London, UK
and then select Agas London
, the map will move over the London and provide you with
a bounding box around the rough area covered by the Agas Map.
Now zoom in to locate the place you found through Nominatim or some other resource, and you’re ready to start drawing. This map makes it possible to create an additional geometry type, the GeometryCollection, which is what you need if your location includes a mixture of two or more different types of base geometry (such as a LineString and a Polygon).