HistoAtlas
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| URL | www.histoatlas.org |
| Slogan | The most important part of history is remembering history. |
| Commercial? | No |
| Type of site | Historical Geograpical Information System |
| Registration | Optional |
| Created by | Stefaan Desender |
| Launched | March 27, 2008 |
| Current status | perpetual work-in-progress |
HistoAtlas is a free collection of historic geographic information of the human culture all over the world. This is achieved as a time enabled geographic information system (GIS) on the web. All information can be used and edited freely and is intended to be a resource for education, archaeologists, historians and others.
Introduction
HistoAtlas provides a system to actively maintain historical information derived from historical records and check if it is consistent. It is not meant discover new historical facts but to put everything together so it can be presented as one whole story.
It is an open project making sure everyone benefits from it. Everyone can use the information and can collaborate on the project. Its main audience is the general public but it should also have enough historical details so also historians should be able to enjoy it.
HistoAtlas is not only able to visualize the changes in extent of different countries. But also the events caused this change altogether, because these things are historically more important than just the change of a border.
The atlas has information about different aspects of history. A few examples.
- Political boundaries based on antique historical records or archiological research.
- Historical events like wars, disasters, discoveries, treaties and journeys that shaped the course of time.
- Facts about historical figures and their families that played an important role in history.
- The evolution of cultural aspects like languages and religions.
Strategy
HistoAtlas aims to be a free, multilingual historical encyclopedia, intended as the most precise open content global historical reference.
In concept there are some similarities to what online encyclopedia like wiki.gis.com are doing, with differences on how data is stored, presented and used. It is a history oriented geographic information system. Information is structured more transparently so it can be searched more efficiently and presented in different ways. wiki.gis.com and other encyclopedia are focused on articles and are not able to create maps efficiently because they are not meant to do this.
But like wiki.gis.com the information and application will be made available under an open license, meaning it will be maintained by volunteers who want to share their knowledge.
Data Pertinance
HistoAtlas is a historical atlas of global data. It targets relevant facts of the history of human culture. Historical data exists in various details. It is not possible to have the borders of the Macedon Empire in same detail as contemporary borders.
HistoAtlas tries to achieve a scale of 1:1,000,000 where possible for geographic data and a time resolution of a day.
Consistency
The vision that HistoAtlas wants to put forward is the one of a collaborative system. Scientist require that the information is correct. Making sure that data is correct will be a high priority of the system. For now only a basic system has been put in place, but this will be extended in the future. Making sure the system is very manageable, transparent and easy to explore is the key to finding flaws and removing them and putting forward new relations.
Licencing
Everything developed for the project is licensed under an open license. It can be used and improved by anyone.
All data published under the project is put under a GNU Free Documentation License.
References
- HistoAtlas official website
- Ian N. Gregory: A place in History A short introduction to HGIS by the lead developers of GBHGIS ISSN 1463-5194
