Geovistory

Geovistory is a collaborative and open information system. Data from all research projects active in Geovistory are automatically linked together, as they are integrated (semantically & linked) and created collaboratively. On this basis, new insights are made possible by innovative visualization and analysis tools.

The information in Geovistory is interoperable and reusable: Each data point is semantically defined (according to CIDOC-CRM and domain-specific extensions), published under a Creative Commons license and linked to external resources according to the Linked Open Data for Research (LOD-R) vision and FAIR principles.

The product

The Geovistory information system has two browser-based access points. The first is the data publication platform Geovistory.org. Here, researchers and interested parties (the general public) can review projects, directly access curated data and analyze it. The publication platform is designed in such a way that external software developers can develop and integrate their own components (web components). The second access point is the Toolbox, a virtual research environment in which researchers collect, curate and analyze data.

The information system is used by an active community that is constantly developing and documenting it. Suitable channels, forums and good documentation are available for this purpose (both for the use of the toolbox and for the further technical development of Geovistory).

Geovistory is supplemented by suitable exchange spaces & documentation (for science, education, journalism, tourism, etc.) for the development of a community of active researchers (prosumers) and data users (consumers) who fill the platform with life.

Who Geovistory belongs to

The publication platform Geovistory.org is jointly developed by KleioLab, LARHRA, the University of Bern and other stakeholders who share the vision of Geovistory. The LOD4HSS project, which is co-financed by swissuniversities, structures these efforts. The data publication platform Geovistory.org is being developed as open source and is available to the community via GitHub. The appropriate open source licensing has yet to be determined. The publication platform is designed to allow external software developers to develop and integrate their own components (web components). We invite all contributors to develop these components as open source and will do so ourselves.

The toolbox is owned, developed and maintained by KleioLab. It is not open source. However, this will change soon. The toolbox is freely accessible for all individual projects.

The data and its accessibility

All data in Geovistory is open and licensed under Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 and can be freely reused. All structured data is semantically defined according to CIDOC-CRM and domain-specific extensions (Semantic Data for Humanities & Social Sciences SDHSS). The supported data formats also include TEI (Text Encoding Initiative). The data is made accessible via a graphical interface and a standard SPARQL endpoint.

If you have any questions about Geovistory, please contact Stephen Hart (stephen.hart@unibe.ch).