The Locloud historical place names microservice, funded by the European Commission, aims to enhance historical geo-information management by connecting historical place names to contemporary ones and preserving intangible heritage. It provides tools for local cultural institutions to collaborate on a thesaurus of historical place names, enabling users to access and contribute data. Future development plans include improving multilingual capabilities, enhancing data content, and ensuring interoperability with other similar services.

1. Local content in a Europeana cloud
Beyond the space: the LoCloud Historical Place
Names microservice
LoCloud is funded by the
European Commission's ICT Policy Support Programme
Rimvydas Laužikas, Justinas Jaronis, Ingrida Vosyliūtė
Vilnius University Faculty of Communication

2. Short Historical Memory Test
  

3. • Are people who are
from Albion there?

4. • Are people who are
from Albion there?
Insulae Albion et Hibernia cum minoribus adjacentibus, 1600-1699,
Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Cartes et plans,
CPL GE DD-2987 (9732), [Europeana.eu].

5. • Have you ever been to
Aquinicum?

6. • Have you ever been to
Aquinicum?
Plattegrond van Buda, 1686, Harmanus van Loon, Lodewijk XIV (koning van
Frankrijk), 1693 - 1696, Rijksmuseum, RP-P-1892-A-16766,
[Europeana.eu].

7. • Do you know where
Atlantis is located?

8. • Do you know where
Atlantis is located?
Carte de l'Atlantide : d'après Platon et Diodore, 1775, Bibliothèque nationale
de France, département Cartes et plans, GE D-17772, [Europeana.eu].

9. • The set of place names in historical sources.
 Three points of view: geographical (earth sciences), historical (humanities), IT
(technical).
 Two understandings: geo-name as tool [for information management], geo-name as
intangible heritage.
 Technically [in mean of CIDOC-CRM] an HPN is a place appellation, which may
refer to several places, because its use may change over time.
 On the other hand, the place as an object is determined in GIS as a defined
immovable geographic object: point, polygon or a line on a map
 A place name can be understood as an historical identifier for several places and (or)
as a kind of intangible heritage (“non-material products of our minds”).
What are Historical Place Names?

10. 1. Interoperability.
[Europeana.eu, 09-02-2015: Lietuva: 39697;
Lithuania: 28948; Litauen: 11308;
Lituanie: 8770; Litwa: 20647; ...].
2. Conservation of intangible heritage.
[HPN as a link between past and present
(“enduring voices”), losing HPN is
losing our cultural signs].
3. Creation of European “multi-
narrative”/”political narrative”.
[“the mind and body of Europe”].
What are the problems?
Sebastian Munster. Europa Regina, Cosmographia, Basel, 1570,
[Wikipedia.org].

11. What is the possible solution?
• HPN microservice

12. What is the HPN
microservice?
• A semi-automatic historical geo-
information management function
and web service.
• An application which enables
local cultural institutions to
collaborate in developing the
Thesaurus of HPN and enriching
ingested metadata.
• Developed by Vilnius University
Faculty of Communication in
collaboration with LoCloud
partners.

13. How the HPN
microservice work?

14. User Case I:
Local history researcher
[unregistered user]
• To verify the availability of a
historical place name in the
LoCloud HPN Thesaurus
• To get information about the
interconnection of HPN with
contemporary place names, its
linguistic variations and
geographical coordinates
• To propose [crowdsource] a new
historic place name for the
LoCloud HPN Thesaurus

15. User Case II:
Local history database administrator
[registered user]
• To export selected LoCloud HPN
Thesaurus data sets.
• To interconnect contemporary
place names, different historical
and linguistic place name forms
and geographical coordinates.
• To enrich a local system with
exported HPN geo-data.
• To collaborate in developing the
LoCloud HPN Thesaurus by
sending local data and contacting
us.

16. Next steps
• Polygon data
• Enrichment of content of HPN Thesauri
• Improve multilinguistics by connection with Wikipedia
• Development of HPN “toolbox” (e.g. by historical maps creating tool,
historical geo-information analysis tool and etc.)
• Enabling of interoperability between LoCloud HPN services and
another similar tools
• HPN as part of national service:
Integral Thesaurus of historical places, personal names and
historical chronology as part of project
“Virtual Electronic Heritage System (VEPS) 3”

17. Thank you for your attention
Find HPN microservice: <http://tautosaka.llti.lt/en/unitedgeo>
Find all LoCloud tools /services: <http://support.locloud.eu/tiki-index.php?page=HomePage>
Email us: <rimvydas.lauzikas@kf.vu.lt>