OS200: Digitally Re-Mapping Ireland's Ordnance Survey Heritage

爱尔兰在全球地图和地图制作史上具有特别重要的地位。两个世纪前，该岛成为第一个完全按照6英寸到1英里的大比例尺绘制地图的国家。虽然在今天，这在当时似乎并不引人注目，但它是一项重大成就。地图制作者不仅调查和记录了地面上的地物，他们还记录了一系列令人印象深刻的当地细节，包括民俗、地名、文物、宗教和地形。所有这些工作都是在19世纪20年代至40年代期间由爱尔兰的军械调查局(OS)进行的。很快，2024年将是这一令人印象深刻的壮举开始200周年，这为我们提供了一个及时的机会，重新评估操作系统在爱尔兰岛上的影响和遗产。因此，这是OS200项目的主要目标，该项目是英国和爱尔兰在数字人文领域的合作。这项名为“OS200：以数字方式重新绘制爱尔兰军械调查遗产图”的项目，将首次将历史上的OS地图和文本链接在一起，形成一个可免费访问的单一在线资源。这样做将使来自爱尔兰北部和南部的一组研究人员能够发现那些来自英国和爱尔兰的人在绘制和记录风景和地点时，原本被隐藏和遗忘的生活和工作方面。使用新的和创新的数字方法、技术、工具和实践，OS200将向那些实地考察爱尔兰无数城镇并收集当地故事的人寻找地图背后的东西。该项目试图通过操作系统留下的记录和账户来更好地了解这一‘实地’生活。操作系统在爱尔兰留下的这些遗产具有巨大的公众和学术重要性和兴趣，但随着时间的推移，曾经由操作系统创建的相互关联的素材语料库已经变得支离破碎，分散在不同的收藏中。OS200将重新连接和丰富这些材料，重新建立回忆录、素描、信件、名录和地图之间的联系，使它们成为OS最初设想的整体。在爱尔兰即将迎来OS 200周年之际，我们的项目将提供一个机会，重新评估OS对爱尔兰地图的历史影响及其持久的遗产。OS200使用21世纪的技术将过去和现在联系起来，分析和可视化OS在地面上是如何运行的，因为勘测员遇到了“被调查者”。对于爱尔兰来说，这一点非常重要，因为制图员和地图绘制人员之间的关系复杂，有时还存在问题，外部当局--在这里是作为州地图绘制机构的OS--与整个岛屿的当地社区之间的关系。有了数字人文方法，这些关系可以用新的方式进行检查和探索，以打开地图，帮助我们更好地了解地图制作者走进地貌并记录下那里的过程和做法。对爱尔兰来说，操作系统的这项工作具有重大而持久的意义，尤其是在记录和授权官方地名方面，布莱恩·弗里尔的著名戏剧《翻译》捕捉到了这一过程，尽管并不是没有争议。我们贝尔法斯特女王大学和利默里克大学之间的英国-爱尔兰研究合作，得到了爱尔兰皇家学院、北爱尔兰公共记录办公室和爱尔兰数字存储库的支持，将重新审视操作系统如何不仅描绘爱尔兰，而且如何在他们帮助改变爱尔兰的过程中。我们新的OS200语料库和研究成果涉及整个爱尔兰，它的城镇，教区，田野，农场和贫民窟。作为对OS的及时数字重新评估的结果，OS200不仅将对爱尔兰人和地方的地图绘制和命名产生更深入和更具批判性的理解，它还将提供一项有形和持久的遗产本身，一种新的爱尔兰OS遗产的数字重新绘制，供所有人参与、研究和发现。

Ireland has particular importance in the global history of maps and map-making. Two centuries ago, the island became the first country to be mapped entirely at the large scale of six inches to one mile. While today this might seem unremarkable at the time it was a major achievement. Not only did the map-makers survey and record features on the ground, they recorded an impressive range of local details, including folklore, place-names, antiquities, religion and topography. All of this work was undertaken by the Ordnance Survey (OS) in Ireland during the 1820s-1840s. Very soon, 2024 will be the bicentenary anniversary of the start of this impressive feat, which offers us a timely opportunity to re-evaluate the impacts and legacies of the OS on the island of Ireland. This, then, is the main aim of the OS200 project as a UK-Ireland collaboration in Digital Humanities. This all-Ireland project, "OS200: Digitally Re-mapping Ireland's Ordnance Survey Heritage", will link together historic OS maps and texts to form a single freely-accessible online resource for the first time. Doing so will enable a team of researchers from across Ireland--north and south--to uncover otherwise hidden and forgotten aspects of the life and work of those from Britain and Ireland employed by the OS as they mapped and recorded landscapes and localities. Using new and innovative digital methods, techniques, tools and practices, OS200 will look 'behind the map' to those on the ground who surveyed Ireland's myriad townlands and gathered local stories. The project seeks to understand better this life 'in the field' through the records and accounts left behind by the OS. These legacies of the OS in Ireland are of immense public and academic importance and interest, yet over time what was once a connected corpus of material created by the OS has become fragmented and scattered across different collections. OS200 will reconnect and enrich these materials, recreating connections between memoirs, sketches, letters, name-books and maps, into the whole the OS originally conceived them to be. Timed to coincide with the upcoming bicentenary of the OS in Ireland, our project will offer an opportunity to reappraise the historic impacts of the OS's mapping of Ireland, and their lasting legacies.OS200 connects past and present using 21st-century technologies to analyse and visualise how the OS operated, on the ground, as surveyors encountered 'the surveyed'. This is so important in the context of Ireland, with the complex and sometimes troubled relationships between map-makers and the mapped, between outside authorities-in this case the OS as a state mapping agency-and local communities across the island. With Digital Humanities approaches, these relationships can be examined and explored in new ways to 'open up the map', to help us understand better the processes and practices involved when map-makers went out into the landscape and recorded what was there.For Ireland this work by the OS had great and lasting significance, not least in recording and authorising official place-names, a process captured though not without controversy by Brian Friel's well-known play, 'Translations'. Our UK-Ireland research collaboration between Queen's University Belfast and the University of Limerick, supported by the Royal Irish Academy, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, and Digital Repository of Ireland, will re-examine how the OS not only mapped Ireland, but how also in the process they helped to transform it. Our new 'OS200 corpus' and research outcomes relate to the whole of Ireland, its townlands, parishes, fields, farms and loughs. As a result of this timely digital re-appraisal of the OS, not only will OS200 create a deeper and more critical understanding of the mapping and naming of Ireland's people and places, it will provide a tangible and lasting legacy itself, a new digital 're-mapping' of Ireland's OS heritage for all to engage with, study and discover.