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

爱丁堡有着独特的文学城市景观。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，对于欧文·威尔士、伊恩·兰金和亚历山大·麦考尔·史密斯等作家来说，这是一个非常强大的存在。它的文学遗产以城市的自我展示为特色，向游客和游客以及居民展示，2004年，它是第一个被联合国教科文组织授予“世界文学之都”称号的城市。2014- 2015年，“重写本”项目进行了一次独特的实验。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。这些技术从500多个标题中生成了47000个摘录的数据集，每一个都以地理参考的爱丁堡地名为中心。通过这种方式，文学城市景观以新的方式变得可见——它可以被绘制出来，也可以被阅读，并且可以看到或建立作品和地点之间的新的联系和比较。我们对“重写本”的研究通过LitLong.org网站和一些探索性的地图可视化公布。这项工作的出版也清楚地表明，在学术界之外，人们对我们的数据以及我们创新的数字化重组爱丁堡文学城市景观有着浓厚的兴趣。苏格兰首都爱丁堡文化经济的两个重要参与者，联合国教科文组织世界文学之城信托基金会和爱丁堡国际图书节，都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个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和他们寻求服务的不同社区的需求而创建。这个合作项目将专注于设计和开发这样一个界面，可以通过在线、手机和平板电脑以及文化场所的大型触摸屏访问。其目的是创造一种创新的文学体验，这将有助于我们的项目合作伙伴推广和培养爱丁堡的文学遗产和当前的声誉。此外，该项目还将开创与苏格兰独立出版公司Birlinn Ltd.合作的新形式。我们将使用为“重写本”项目创建的工作流管道，从公司的Polygon印记中进行文本挖掘和地理参考相关作品，将它们合并到我们的数据集中，并通过界面提供地理参考摘录。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，帮助推广它们，并鼓励读者阅读新的爱丁堡文学。我们将与我们的项目伙伴合作，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群体，包括教师、旅游业专业人士、图书馆员、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，并免费提供给其他可能的受益者。我们还将通过界面收集用户的反馈，这些反馈将与定量数据相结合，让我们了解用户对展出的文学作品的喜好和价值。随着新界面的推出，我们将在爱丁堡选定的地点进行照明装置活动，将文字放在街道上。其目的将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。我们希望建立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，也许是在更大的范围内。

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.