EDINA newsline
December 2009: Volume 14 Issue 4
Unlock is a set of web services intended to help researchers, developers and online service providers realise potential currently hidden within digital resources. This builds on project R&D and on middleware that has been operating in the background as GeoCrossWalk.
Unlock places is a simple search function for place names and postcodes, with the added capability of supporting shape-based queries over a web-based API: such queries as "show me all churches within five miles of this parish (boundary)". To complement the added-value Ordnance Survey gazetteer which is restricted to academic use, it uses an open data gazetteer. Additional Web 2.0-style data formats have been added to encourage "opportunistic development" from non-specialist developers.
EDINA has been working on projects with the Language Technology Group in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, developing facilities for geoparsing. Having now tested this by georeferencing demographic statistics and parliamentary proceedings, it was decided to make this available as a service for other developers to "geo-activate" text in documents and XML metadata records: Unlock text.
This is part of a general strategy to support a "Linked Data" approach for information about places. For example, plans are in hand to work with projects in the bibliographic space, both within and outwith EDINA, to help geo-activate their world, and therefore the wider scholarly world.
Over the coming year the Unlock team plan additional web services to help unlock other hidden potential in resources, including extraction of personal names from full text, and references to times and dates.