OHM presentation for Wikimania 2021

1. Open History Map

2. Open History Map
Contextualizing in the past with
modern tools
Marco Montanari -
marco.montanari@openhistorymap.org

3. Open History Map
The Association
Aim: The creation of a toolchain and toolset to teach history with modern Web-
GIS tools.
Secondary aims: Create a series of tools to facilitate the work for the people who create the
data (researchers, archaeologists, historians)

4. History is
complicated
● Representation of history
○ Problems with detail
○ Problems with depth of
analysis
○ Problems with vicinity
○ Problems with structure
○ Problems with technology

5. Diachronic historical research
was invented by Thomas
Jefferson for the analysis of
native americans

6. Maps are
complicated
Representation of the “current”
status of the changes in the
world, according to those who
define “current” and “world”

8. 1588, Braun and Hogenberg, Civitates
Orbis Terrarum, map IV-49

9. Gregorian Cadastre 1830

10. Gregorian Cadastre 1830
Open Data - Comune di Bologna -
Originedibologna.it

11. The map
https://map.openhistorymap.org

12. OHM Map

14. The Sources
- Not all sources are equal
- Not all sources have the same
detail
- Not all sources have the same
structure
Process, monitoring

15. OHM Data Index
We needed to keep track of the
structure and the quality of the single
datasources
Based on OKFN Data Index
- Index
- Importer
https://index.openhistorymap.org

16. Why does
the world
change?
- Nature: volcanoes, quakes,
tsunamis, climate
- Mankind: Births, deaths,
wars, terrorist attacks,
artworks, laws,
conferences, commerce...

17. Photo
Ephemeral
data

18. Photo
Ephemeral
data...
...does not mean “useless” or “minor”.

19. Photo
How do we
perceive the
changes?
Wikimedia commons is full of beautiful
historic photos and paintings of the
world in the past. And SDC gives us lots
of information
But there is not only Wikimedia
Commons...

20. Photo
Placing
documents in
time and
space
https://view.openhistorymap.org/map/
1980.5900349089006/17.46492212972005
5/44.50585721181858/11.34243230651566
1
We imported the SDC data with time
and space into the layer as well.
https://view.openhistorymap.org/map/1980.5900349089006/17.4649
22129720055/44.50585721181858/11.342432306515661

21. What did we learn?
- As there was pre-history and then “history”, there has to be a pre-data and
“data”-age. And just like that we need to be able to reconstruct the data for
the pre-data age.
- People working in Digital Humanities do not (all) know that there is a world
out there
- People working on their own project do not know what could be done with
their data
- Searchability is amazing and horrible
- We need to reach out to all the non-wikimedia centric world and all the non-
open institutions

22. Photo
Where does
the future
bring us?
- Public History Toolkit
- Update Wikidata and SDC with
data from DH
- Speaking with DH
By http://www.moviestillsdb.com/movies/toy-story-3-i435761/20c11d67, Fair use,
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44184427

23. For infos
- https://www.openhistorymap.org
- https://map.openhistorymap.org
- https://index.openhistorymap.org
- https://blog.openhistorymap.org
- https://visions.ofthepast.org
User:Mmo
marco.montanari@openhistorymap.org

24. Thanks to our archaeologists
- Silvia Bernardoni
- Lucia Marsicano
- Raffaele Trojanis

25. THANK YOU