Words on the Street: the Uses of a Digital Literary Cityscape

街上的文字：数字文学城市景观的用途

• 批准号: AH/P009549/1
• 负责人: James Loxley
• 金额: $ 20.51万
• 依托单位: University of Edinburgh
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2017 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FP009549%2F1
• 关键词: Words; Street; Uses; Digital; Literary

Edinburgh has a unique literary cityscape. It has long been associated with authors such as Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stephenson, and Muriel Spark; more recently, it is a very strong presence for writers including Irvine Welsh, Ian Rankin and Alexander McCall Smith. Its literary heritage features in the city's self-presentation to visitors and tourists as well as to residents, and in 2004 it was the first ever city to be granted the UNESCO title of 'World City of Literature'.In 2014-15, the 'Palimpsest' project undertook a singular experiment. Using textmining and geolocation techniques, we searched millions of digitised books to bring together narrative works which made use of Edinburgh as a setting. These techniques generated a dataset of 47,000 extracts from more than 500 titles, each one centred around the use of a georeferenced Edinburgh place name. In this way, the literary cityscape becomes visible in new ways - it can be mapped, as well as read, and new connections and comparisons between works and places can be seen or made.Our research for 'Palimpsest' was made public via a website, LitLong.org, and through a couple of exploratory cartographic visualisations. The publication of the work has also made clear that there is substantial interest in our data beyond academia, and in our innovative digital reorganisation Edinburgh's literary cityscape. Two significant players in the cultural economy of Scotland's capital city, the Edinburgh UNESCO World City of Literature Trust and the Edinburgh International Book Festival, have shown interest in making substantial use of the resource, and have agreed to work with us to develop it. However, its utility for our these institutions is conditional on the creation of a new intuitive and interactive resource, specifically designed for users outside academia and created in accordance with the needs of external stakeholders and the diverse communities they seek to serve. This collaborative project will focus on the design and development of such an interface, accessible online, via mobile phones and tablets, and via large touchscreens in cultural venues. The aim is to create an innovative literary experience which will assist our project partners in the promotion and cultivation of Edinburgh's literary heritage and current reputation.In addition, the project will pioneer a new form of collaboration with an independent Scottish publishing company, Birlinn Ltd. We will use the workflow pipeline created for the 'Palimpsest' project to text-mine and georeference relevant works from the company's Polygon imprint, incorporating them into our dataset and making georeferenced extracts available via the interface. In this way, we will be bringing the company's publications to new readers in a new way, helping to promote them and to encourage readership of new Edinburgh-set literature.We will collaborate with our project partners to develop ways of using the new interface that are particularly suitable for specific professional user communities with which they work, including teachers, tourist industry professionals, librarians, school students, visitors, and hard-to-reach groups. The resources developed will be published on the project website, and made freely available to other potential beneficiaries. We will also be gathering user responses via the interface, which will combine with quantitative data to give us insights into what users like and value about the literary works on show.We will accompany the launch of the new interface with a campaign of illuminated installations at selected sites throughout Edinburgh, literally putting the words on the street. The aim will be to foster the widest possible uptake of the resource, enhancing its usefulness to project partners and other beneficiaries. We hope to establish that this way of interacting with the literature of place can offer a model for creative economies elsewhere, and perhaps on a larger scale.

爱丁堡拥有独特的文学都市景观。长期以来，它一直与沃尔特·斯科特、罗伯特·路易斯斯蒂芬森和穆里尔·斯帕克等作家联系在一起;最近，它对欧文·威尔士、伊恩·兰金和亚历山大·麦考尔·史密斯等作家来说是一个非常强大的存在。它的文学遗产是这座城市向游客和居民自我展示的特色，2004年，它是有史以来第一个被联合国教科文组织授予“世界文学之城”称号的城市。2014-15年，“Palimpés”项目进行了一项独特的实验。使用文本挖掘和地理定位技术，我们搜索了数百万本数字化书籍，将以爱丁堡为背景的叙事作品汇集在一起。这些技术产生了一个数据集，其中包括从500多个标题中提取的47 000个摘录，每个标题都围绕着使用一个地理参考的爱丁堡地名。通过这种方式，文学城市景观以新的方式变得可见--它可以被绘制成地图，也可以被阅读，作品和地方之间的新联系和比较可以被看到或做出。我们对“Palimpture”的研究通过一个网站LitLong.org和几个探索性的地图可视化公开。这项工作的出版也清楚地表明，我们对学术界以外的数据以及我们创新的数字重组爱丁堡的文学城市景观有很大的兴趣。苏格兰首都文化经济的两个重要参与者，爱丁堡联合国教科文组织世界文学之城信托基金和爱丁堡国际图书节，已经表示有兴趣充分利用这一资源，并同意与我们合作开发这一资源。然而，它对我们这些机构的效用取决于创造一种新的直观和互动的资源，专门为学术界以外的用户设计，并根据外部利益相关者及其寻求服务的不同社区的需求创建。这个合作项目将侧重于设计和开发这样一个界面，通过移动的手机和平板电脑，以及通过文化场所的大型触摸屏，可以在线访问。目的是创造一种创新的文学体验，帮助我们的项目合作伙伴推广和培养爱丁堡的文学遗产和现有声誉。此外，该项目将开创一种与苏格兰独立出版公司合作的新形式，Birlinn Ltd.我们将使用为“Palimpirt”项目创建的工作流程管道来文本-从公司的Polygon印记中挖掘和地理参考相关作品，将其纳入我们的数据集，并通过界面提供地理参考提取。通过这种方式，我们将以一种新的方式将公司的出版物带给新的读者，帮助推广他们，并鼓励新的爱丁堡文学的读者。我们将与我们的项目合作伙伴合作，开发使用新界面的方法，特别适合他们工作的特定专业用户社区，包括教师，旅游业专业人员，图书馆员，学校学生，游客，和难以接触的群体。开发的资源将在项目网站上公布，并免费提供给其他潜在受益者。我们还将通过界面收集用户的反应，该界面将结合联合收割机和定量数据，让我们深入了解用户对展出文学作品的喜爱和价值。我们将在爱丁堡的选定地点推出照明装置活动，将文字放在街上。目的是促进尽可能广泛地利用资源，提高其对项目伙伴和其他受益者的用处。我们希望，这种与地方文学互动的方式可以为其他地方的创意经济提供一个模式，也许是更大规模的。