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A CLARIAH-VL supported data management system: nodegoat

Information on people, places, and things are related to each other in different ways. There are countless ways we can infer these relations which are research question and source dependent. There are also many ways to store this information as data. The nodegoat platform is an object oriented relational web-based data management system which also provides network and geospatial visualizations in one platform. It has the availability to develop custom data models, and then collaborate on this data and later generate visualizations and export data. Within CLARIAH-VL nodegoat is used to store, organize, maintain and analyze relational data. Below you can find the cases where the platform is currently or has been used.

To support researchers in their use of such data, CLARIAH-VL & GhentCDH are hosting 2 nodegoat workshops. In the workshop you will learn how to use this platform for your research. The workshops will be held in two parts on the same day:

1) beginners

2) advanced users (users that already are using nodegoat or have setup an instance).

The workshops, given by the developers of the platform – Lab1100, will be held on 16 November from 10 – 12h & 14 – 16h respectively at Ghent University. Both workshops will be given in English, but questions may be asked in Dutch. The exact location will be confirmed two weeks before the location to registered participants. Please register here: https://event.ugent.be/registration/nodegoat.

An example of the nodegoat instance, as used in the TIC Collaborative project. This network represents a social visualisation of people and conferences.

To get an idea of how nodegoat can be used in research, see this list of the use cases, all projects supported by GhentCDH (CLARIAH-VL):

Discover Ghent through historical maps: unveiling the past with Gent Gemapt

Our partners from the Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities are proud to present their newest project: Ghent Mapped. The digital city map ‘Gent Gemapt’ stacks 20 historical maps and connects them to 4,000 places and 10,000 pieces of heritage. Collections and history that over time have become dispersed among museums, libraries, archives, associations and living rooms, come together again virtually. Reunited, they offer a multifaceted view of the city and its past. Go explore for yourself via gentgemapt.be and discover Ghent layer by layer, from the Middle Ages to today.

The cultural heritage project Gent Gemapt is a collaboration of Ghent University LibrarySTAM – Stadsmuseum GentHuis van AlijnIndustriemuseumArchief GentAmsab-Institute for Social HistoryLiberas and Erfgoedcel Gent. It was developed and coordinated by the Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities at Ghent University, with support from CLARIAH-VL.

Example of the enriched map of Ghent Mapped

Want to know more?

  1. De Kaart” is the core of Ghent Gemapt. It is an innovative presentation platform that spatially unlocks the splendor of Ghent’s heritage collections. It allows you to search, zoom and scroll through time and space of the city.
  2. Gent Verrijkt” stands next to De Kaart and is the digital toolbox of Gent Gemapt. Here, museums and archives enlist the help of volunteers to help transcribe, date, describe and identify their collections.
  3. With the project, the heritage partners are innovating in digital technology. Gent Gemapt uses open source technology Omeka SMadocIIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework), Linked Open Data, and a new Ghent place register.
  4. Gent Gemapt is funded through a project grant from the Department of Culture, Youth and Media of the Flemish Government and through Clariah-Vlaanderen.
  5. After this launch, Gent Gemapt continues to grow and the partners continue to build on the heritage presentation and enrichment via GentGemapt.be.
  6. Read About Gent Gemapt and About the project.

Launch of DigHimapper, a platform to analyse historical maps via georeferencing and annotating

CLARIAH-VL is proud to announce the release of DigHimapper, a platform to analyse historical maps via georeferencing and annotating. It involves the public in two important steps in the processing of historical maps into analysable sources of information to make it possible to visualise landscape evolutions and search maps for place names.

  • In the Georeferencing portal, historical maps are placed as closely as possible to their current state. This is done by looking for points that can be found on both a historical map and in the current landscape. By repositioning the maps, it becomes possible to compare them directly with the present, as well as with other historical maps, thus visualising landscape evolutions.
  • In the Annotation portal, place names (toponyms) on historical maps are converted into text that can be read by computers. Combined with the repositioning of the map itself, these toponyms are given a place in space. Since toponyms often contain a wealth of information about past landscapes, this provides an indispensable resource for studying landscape evolution.

The collection

Central to a first phase of the development of this platform are the magnificent maps of the Arenberg family, which can be found in the General State Archives. The Arenberg family had possessions all over Europe, but mainly in the Low Countries. The collection has now been scanned at high quality and totals some 4,000 maps, ranging from parcel maps of villages to world maps.

An example of georeferencing in the Allmaps Editor

Contribute as a volunteer yourself!

Refine existing georeferences or get to work on toponyms. The results will be used for scientific research on past landscapes, making digital historical maps better available and as a test case to expand the platform with more functions and a multitude of historical maps. Go to the DigHimapper website and you can get started right away!

Contact: dighimaps@uantwerpen.be

DigHimapper is a collaboration between the University of Antwerp, the State Archives of Belgium, Webmapper and Bert Spaan. The project is funded by the Special Research Fund of the University of Antwerp and CLARIAH-VL. The original historical maps were transferred by the Arenberg Foundation to the State Archives of Belgium, which was responsible for scanning them. DigHimapper is also part of the FED-tWIN DigHimaps, a project collaboration between the University of Antwerp and the State Archives of Belgium, funded by BELSPO.