Page 120 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 43

120 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.9, 2017

not the historical map image resources. However, the establishment of interoperable interface with
professional historical map image database should also be taken into consideration.
In recent years, the author summarized the following two kinds of application scenarios of
historical geography knowledge base during the process of design and development of the DH
platform in Shanghai Library:
1) Achieve the large-scale semi-automatic name extraction and calibration in the data processing
and cleaning stage. For example, most of the migration data in genealogies appear in the form
of ancient names, and fail to associate with its corresponding space, let alone the different place
names corresponding to spaces in different times, especially place names at present. Therefore,
a knowledge base is necessary to offer convenient efficient contrast services of past and present
place names as well geospatial data.
2) Realize the superimposed display on multi-time geographic map of historical place names
in different ages in the data visualization presentation. For example, among Sheng Xuanhuai’s
more than 90,000 letters, the sending and receiving places are important information. However,
these place names, used in the period of late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China, are very
different from the names nowadays. It is necessary to acquire the spatial information about the
latitude and longitude that corresponds to place names in the database, realize more accurate query,
and visually present the information on the three different historical maps of the late Qing Dynasty,
the Republic of China and the contemporary age.
Based on the above application scenarios, the knowledge base should meet the following
requirements.
1) Functional requirements
Place name authority control. The knowledge base should first offer place name authority
control service in the Internet environment, which requires that each place name ever occurred in
history should be identified, located, and accessed on the Internet. In other words, each place name
should have an URI (Uniform Resource Identifier).
Historical geography data service. When accessing the URI of a place name, information such
as its duration of time horizon, spatial existence, administrative seat name, latitude and longitude,
as well as administrative relationships and spatial affiliations with other place names can be
obtained.
Past and present place names contrast service. Other names and their related spatial-temporal
data that have the same relationship with this place name in time sequence can be acquired
according to the key information such as the duration of time horizon, spatial existence and
administrative seat name.
2) Technical requirements
Adopt open data model. The design of the data model needs to be compatible with the existing
historical geography data model so as to support the fusion and mash up of multi-source data. In
addition, the data model needs to have good extendibility for data modification and addition.