World-Historical Gazetteer

FAIN: HD-51828-14

University of Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh, PA 15260-6133)
Patrick Manning (Project Director: September 2013 to May 2016)
Ruth Mostern (Co Project Director: September 2013 to May 2016)

A two-day workshop in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and follow-up activities for geographers, historians, and information scientists to consider how a world-historical gazetteer might be created that combines earlier work in regional and historical place name databases.

This project will advance work toward creation of a world-historical gazetteer that will provide comprehensive databases of places throughout the world since 1500 CE, including attention to the range of attributes known for each place. To satisfy the needs of all the large-scale historical data resources now being created, there is need for such a comprehensive and general gazetteer system. The convening of a two-day workshop, including leading figures who have developed gazetteers and the datasets in which they are incorporated, will bring about a research design for this world-historical gazetteer system, which can then be implemented in subsequent work. Four small research tasks concerning services, standards, and content will bring immediate advance toward implementation. The project is organized by the Collaborative for Historical Information and Analysis (CHIA), which has a record in sustaining collaborations for large-scale humanities work.