Connecting Historical Authorities with Linked data, Contexts and Entities (CHALICE)

Connecting Historical Authorities with Linked data, Contexts and Entities

Title

Connecting Historical Authorities with Linked data, Contexts and Entities

Acronym

CHALICE

Duration

June 2010 - February 2011. Extended to 30 April 2011.

Website

CHALICE blog (no longer updated)

Summary

The aim was to create an historic placename gazetteer for the UK, publish it as Linked Data and link it to other widely-used sources of placename reference information on the semantic web e.g. geonames.org using Named Entity Recognition techniques to extract placename and timescale reference information from texts, using digitised text from the English Place Name Survey.

The project generated a gazetteer of historic UK placenames, linked to documents and authority files in Linked Data form. It also generated new placename authority files by extracting geographic names from text documents, and used digitised selections from the English Place Name Survey as a primary resource. Finally it utilised the Edinburgh Geoparser to 'georesolve' placenames listed in authority files and link them to widely-used geographic entities on the Linked Data web.

Project Deliverables

A gazetteer with dense historic coverage (in theory back to the Domesday era) for all recorded placenames and variants within a few key areas.
A Linked Data version of this gazettteer
A simple web interface to annotate and correct the gazetteer data and semi-automatically created links to other entities on the semantic web
A short series of case studies demonstrating use of the gazetteer and its potential application to other, similar archives and services
Search through the gazetteer data using the JISC-supported Unlock Places service
Final report