Pleiades: Content and Community for Ancient Geography

FAIN: PW-50557-10

New York University (New York, NY 10012-1019)
Thomas R. Elliott (Project Director: July 2009 to July 2014)

The continued development of an open-access digital gazetteer for Greek and Roman history with reusable open-source software that could be employed in other digital humanities publications.

Pleiades is an open-access digital gazetteer for Greek and Roman history. It builds on the NEH-supported Classical Atlas Project (CAP; 1988-2000), which produced the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (Princeton, 2000). Pleiades lets scholars, students and enthusiasts worldwide freely use, create and share historical-geographic information. This proposal outlines phase 2, which shifts focus from design and development to community-building and content creation. We will attract and keep new users by publishing all legacy CAP materials (for 32,000+ historical places) and enhancing it with new material from several sources. We will further support research and publication through community-prioritized improvements to the user interface, expanded format alternatives and interoperation with other digital publications.