I’m attending a workshop about reading old OS maps using AI tomorrow. Part of the prep is to read Kasra Hosseini, Katherine McDonough, Daniel van Strien, Olivia Vane, and Daniel C S Wilson, “Maps of a Nation? The Digitized Ordnance Survey for New Historical Research,” Journal of Victorian Culture 26, no. 2 (April 2021): 284–299, Maps of a Nation? The Digitized Ordnance Survey for New Historical Research | Journal of Victorian Culture | Oxford Academic
I found it readable and interesting.
tldr; OS map editions took so long to survey that they were often very out-of-date. Historical study of, for example, railways cannot assume that an Edition is a snapshot of a single point in time.
I’m posting it here for people who are interested in maps and history.
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That sounds like an interesting workshop. I really wish the thousands of OS flat sheets I have (ex Coventry & Glasgow uni’s mostly) could be better utilised, though 2nd/pathfinder 1:25k sheets are not all OCC yet. Presently they sit mostly in their storage crates.
Thanks also for the journal link.
Look forward to hearing how the workshop went.
Cheers
Andy
Interesting workshop. The attendees were people involved in historical map study rather than programmers and I was amazed at what some of them do for their ‘day job’. Studying the portrayal of Tibet in 1950s newspapers, etc.
Two approaches: image-based and text-based.
Image-based is about training Machine Learning to look for ‘railway-ness’, ‘town-ness’, etc.
Text-based is searching for words by training ML to recognise font shapes and optionally words. E.g. “P. H.”
Historical map studies have difficulty being data-led in detail over the whole UK, there being so many sheets. This software and approach could make it possible.