Machines Reading Maps Workshop

Presented by USC Libraries

Please join us for a hands-on in-person workshop to learn more about using machine learning and semantic web technologies to enhance research using historical maps. You will need your laptop.

Please RSVP by Friday September 2, 2022 at https://forms.gle/vBKeAFXF8hEkahMLA.

Maps constitute a significant body of global cultural heritage, and the number of maps available digitally is quickly growing. However, insufficient metadata often make specific maps hard to find, and the content of many collections remains opaque. In this workshop, members of Machines Reading Maps an NEH-funded project with the Turing Institute at the British Library, University of Minnesota, and the University of Southern California will demonstrate how Machine Learning and the Semantic Web technologies can be used to create data that makes cartographic collections more accessible.

Katie McDonough from the Turing Institute at the British Library and Valeria Vitale from the University of Sheffield will be offering this workshop, where participants will be able to test map text annotation tools and explore the potential of this workflow to generate data and metadata for and from digitized historical maps. Using examples from the Library of Congress collection of Sanborn Fire Insurance maps and Ordnance Survey maps from the National Library of Scotland, this workshop highlights how text on maps preserves valuable information about historical places that now look very different because of transformations like re-development or environmental change. We will providing Los Angeles maps to be used during the workshop.

There are a limited number of spaces available for this workshop. Please register in advance at https://forms.gle/vBKeAFXF8hEkahMLA.