Page 113 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 43

XIA Cuijuan / The opening and application of Chinese historical geography data in Digital Humanities projects of libraries 113

In humanities and social science research areas, space is regarded as a kind of social
construction and comprehensive natural-cultural landscape endowed with human social and
cultural significance, not just the natural territorial space in the traditional geographical sense (G.
Chen, 2014). In this view, the various elements of space will change over time. Modern historical
geography combines space with time, introduces modern information technologies and research
methods including quantitative analysis, comparative research, scientific statistics, and applies
spatial data collection, spatial-temporal data model, multilayer map overlay functions of GIS
technology, in order to reproduce the geographical landscapes in different times and study their
relationships with history, society and nature as well as the evolvement rule. Modern historical
geography has contributed to humanities the data, technologies, platforms and methods under
multidimensional spatial-temporal framework. Therefore, the application of historical geography
data and its related technologies, platforms and methods has become an indispensable and non-
negligible part of DH.
In recent years, libraries, especially large and medium-sized research libraries, have initiated
DH projects. Columbia University, Stanford University, University of California, Los Angeles
(UCLA) and other universities’ libraries and related departments have established DH research
centers. Domestic universities and libraries including Wuhan University, Peking University
Library and Shanghai Library are also actively exploring the approaches to support DH research
and conducting DH construction projects so as to provide better services to humanities research.
Library has its own natural advantages when it comes to DH construction projects. As the
institution which preserves and provides the primary sources for humanities research, the library
has accumulated a large number of digitized resources and highly structured and standardized
metadata records after nearly 20 years’ digital library construction, becoming the data base to DH
project. However, in the process of the project design and standard description of library metadata,
the ignorance of systematically processing and collecting historical geography data, together with
the lack of awareness of introducing modern historical geography research results have hindered
the data processing and presentation under multidimensional spatial-temporal structure and become
one of the bottlenecks for the library to develop DH construction.
By means of The Open Application of Chinese Historical Geography Data in Library DH
Projects, this paper attempts to introduce the findings and achievements of modern historical
geography during the construction of DH projects in libraries. Knowledge organization and
authority control method have been used to reorganize historical geography data. This paper aims
to improve the application of resources, data, tools and platforms of modern historical geography
for libraries so as to narrow the gap between specialized historical geography data and humanities
research. This paper focuses on the collaborative construction of historical geography data in
library field as well as its goals and needs of opening and sharing. Moreover, the paper explores
a more popular and universal spatial-temporal model and an implementation scheme based on
ontology and Linked Data (LD) technologies.