Some of our ‘Silent Disco’ workshops are drawn from tutorials on the Programming Historian website. This training event will follow content from the tutorial, Working with Named Places: How and Why to Build a Gazetteer.
This lesson teaches how to create a digital gazetteer from a historical text using the Linked Places Delimited (LP-TSV) format. A gazetteer records place names, spatial extents, and historical data, offering a structured knowledge system to connect places, events, and people across time. It is a key tool for spatial history and digital humanities.
The workshop will take place via Microsoft Teams in a ‘Silent Disco’ format. Participants will work on the tutorial at their own pace. The facilitator will be available via Teams Chat to reply to any questions that arise during the workshop, and to help with installation, troubleshooting or other issues.
This is a beginner-friendly workshop. No prior knowledge of the topic is required/expected, and the trainer will cover the basics of the method. You will just need a basic understanding of using spreadsheet tools like Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, or LibreOffice Calc.
- Understand the concept of place
- Define what a gazetteer is and distinguish it from other forms of spatial information
- Identify scenarios for which creating a gazetteer may be preferable to using a geographic information system
- Transform a historical text into a gazetteer
- Share a gazetteer with other platforms to enhance it and use it for analytical purposes
By attending this course, you will become familiar with the following skills:
- Ability to create and structure a digital gazetteer from historical texts using the LP-TSV format.
- Confidence in sharing and applying gazetteers across platforms to support spatial history and digital humanities research.
