Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Thomas Gray, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Geographical Information Systems : a literary GIS of two Lake District tours.
AU - Gregory, Ian N.
AU - Cooper, David
PY - 2009/10
Y1 - 2009/10
N2 - There have been growing calls to develop the use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) across the humanities. For this shift to take place, two things must be demonstrated: firstly, that it is technically possible to create a useful GIS of textual material, the main medium through which humanities research is conducted; and, secondly that such a database can be used to enhance our understanding of disciplines within the humanities. This paper reports on a pilot project that created a GIS of two textual accounts of tours of the Lake District: Thomas Gray’s 1769 excursion and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s self-styled ‘circumcursion’ of 1802. It describes how these accounts were converted into a GIS and explores various methodologies that can then be used to explore the spatialities embedded within their respective tours. The resulting material has been placed on the internet at http://www.lancs.ac.uk/mappingthelakes. The pilot demonstrates that it is both possible, and conceptually fruitful, to move GIS beyond the quantitative arena in which it currently resides and into more qualitative areas of humanities research.
AB - There have been growing calls to develop the use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) across the humanities. For this shift to take place, two things must be demonstrated: firstly, that it is technically possible to create a useful GIS of textual material, the main medium through which humanities research is conducted; and, secondly that such a database can be used to enhance our understanding of disciplines within the humanities. This paper reports on a pilot project that created a GIS of two textual accounts of tours of the Lake District: Thomas Gray’s 1769 excursion and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s self-styled ‘circumcursion’ of 1802. It describes how these accounts were converted into a GIS and explores various methodologies that can then be used to explore the spatialities embedded within their respective tours. The resulting material has been placed on the internet at http://www.lancs.ac.uk/mappingthelakes. The pilot demonstrates that it is both possible, and conceptually fruitful, to move GIS beyond the quantitative arena in which it currently resides and into more qualitative areas of humanities research.
KW - Humanities GIS
KW - Lake District
KW - Literary Studies
U2 - 10.3366/E1753854810000534
DO - 10.3366/E1753854810000534
M3 - Journal article
VL - 3
SP - 61
EP - 84
JO - International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing
JF - International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing
SN - 1753-8548
IS - 1-2
ER -