Peers and Context

PEERS

There are a couple projects that shares features with Pleiades are: ToposText and ArtMaps.  Pleiades was created with the goal of sharing historical geographical information about the ancient world in digital form. Much like Pleiades, these other projects are effective at making an archive of historical pieces, locations, or texts.  Each of these projects aims to save some bit of historical information  by adding it to the digital world.

TOPOSTEXT

ToposTexts is a digital indexed collection of ancient greek texts and mapped places. It was created as a mobile application. It would list thousands of different events, places, cities, colonies, points-of-interest, etc. They would be in list form, and you could quickly click any of them and find out more about that specific event or place. Similar to Pleiades, this project seeks to archive historical events and places that are no longer there. It makes it simple to find these places on the project through a search bar or list. Unlike Pleiades, ToposTexts might be a little more general-user friendly. ToposTexts has lists that can be browsed, and on Pleiades it would have to be searched by name.

Map from ToposText project

ARTMAPS

ArtMaps is a project that allows the user to explore more than 70,000 artworks from the Tate’s Collection and associate them with a place, site, or environment. The app, or site, can be used to show paintings that were inspired by a location you are currently near or it can be used to look at paintings that were inspired from the other side of the world. Much like Pleiades, people can comment and upload their own thoughts on an artwork. Without volunteers, both projects would not be nearly as good as they are.

Map from ArtMaps Project

CONTEXT

Digital Humanities projects, such as ToposText and ArtMaps, are important because they can visualize the historical evolution that occurs as time goes on. One method that Pleiades and its peer projects utilizes is crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing requires one to bring in all the work done by a large number of people and putting it together in a project. It is a vital methodology in the Digital Humanities work, as well these projects.