Hestia2: reading texts spatially

Hestia2 is an innovative public engagement project based on the spatial reading and visualising of texts. Involving a research team from Classics, Geography and Computing, Hestia produced two innovative outcomes: the understanding of geographic space in Herodotus's Histories in terms of connections between places and peoples rather than as points on a map; and the development and use of web technologies for visualising and thinking about a narrative. Hestia2 represents a deliberate shift from experimenting with geospatial analysis of a single text to making Hestia's outcomes available to new audiences through a variety of creative means: (i) a seminar series fostering knowledge exchange of Hestia's spatial analysis of a text between researchers and non-academic communities; (ii) an innovative online platform designed to enhance the experience for general enthusiasts, students and teachers of reading Herodotus and be extensible to other texts with spatial aspects; and (iii) a blog and free learning materials aimed at disseminating Hestia's resources and generating public interest.

With the digital medium rapidly transforming the ways in which information is viewed and processed, data visualisation is one of the key challenges to academic and non-academic groups alike. Cultural heritage groups, government agencies and firms working in the digital economy, all have to deal with the problem of presenting big data in ways that make sense to their users but that do not reduce the complexity of the data or give a misleading picture. Hestia2 uses the key intellectual outcome of the original project-the analysis of spatial relations embedded in literary texts-to discuss humanistic approaches to data visualisation which, by virtue of being based on real content that is complex and messy, can help contribute to this debate. In a four-part seminar series, Hestia2 considers: (i) network analysis techniques, methods and models used for data exploration; (ii) the role of GIS in mapping texts; (iii) digital visualisations of data, especially complex literary texts; and (iv) the extent to which digital technologies help non-academics access and comprehend research.

To promote wider engagement among teachers, students and general enthusiasts with the original project's re-imagining of the geography of Herodotus's Histories, Hestia2 brings together the disparate technological innovations into a cohesive, intuitive reading interface (called GapVis). This platform allows users to grasp the total distribution of place references at a glance, move through the narrative and see locations appearing and 'fading from memory', and focus on individual places including their relationships to other locations mentioned 'in the same breath'. By trialling Hestia GapVis with an experienced academic innovator, Hestia2 will ensure a robust and user-friendly reading interface fit for the enthusiast, student, teacher and researcher alike. In addition, by using the Pelagios project's index of references for places mentioned in Herodotus, users of Hestia will be able to link to and bring together different kinds of online data associated with those places, from other texts that mention them, artefacts and inscriptions found there, to digital photos of them.

To enhance dissemination of Hestia's outputs, all activity will be documented on the blog and disseminated via social media, while free learning materials will be produced to enrich the resource. The blog will promote continuous dissemination and discussion of the findings from the seminars as well as feedback about the GapVis reading interface. By documenting the work of adapting the Hestia dataset to GapVis, Hestia2 also sets down guidelines for other users, who may wish to repurpose GapVis for displaying a text of their own choice that has geospatial elements. Lastly, Hestia2 will work with the OU's OpenLearn unit to build free learning materials that provide context for reading Herodotus in GapVis.

Each activity is directly aimed at benefiting new users who are outside the academic research community.

Cultural heritage groups, government agencies and firms working in the digital economy, all have to deal with the problem of presenting big data in ways that make sense to their users but that do not reduce the complexity of the data or give a misleading picture. Hestia2 uses the key intellectual outcome of the original project-the analysis of spatial relations embedded in literary texts-to discuss humanistic approaches to data visualisation which, by virtue of being based on real content that is complex and messy, can help contribute to this debate. In a four-part seminar series, Hestia2 addresses the concerns and interests of four particular groups: (i) English Heritage and the role of network analysis models for data exploration; (ii) Ordnance Survey and the role of qualitative GIS in informing policy debates on place and belonging; (iii) high tech industries and the role of literary texts in developing new visualisation technologies; (iv) educationalists and the role of digital technologies in helping non-academics access to and comprehension of research. These new non-academic communities will gain from using humanities content and approaches to questions of data visualisation.

To promote wider engagement with the original project's re-imagining of the geography of Herodotus's Histories beyond academia, Hestia2 brings together the disparate technological innovations into a cohesive, intuitive reading interface (called GapVis). Furthermore, by trialling Hestia GapVis with an experienced academic innovator, Hestia2 will ensure a robust and user-friendly reading interface fit for general enthusiasts, students, teachers and researchers alike. The platform will allow users to grasp the total distribution of place references at a glance, move through the narrative and see locations appearing and 'fading from memory', and focus on individual places including their relationships to other locations mentioned 'in the same breath'. In short, it will allow people to 'read texts' spatially.

The Hestia2 blog will disseminate the findings from the seminars and act as a discussion forum of key issues for policy makers, digital technologists and educationalists interested in data visualisation. In addition, by promoting dissemination of Hestia GapVis, the blog will allow the broad user community of teachers, students and general enthusiasts to give feedback and recommend improvements. In particular, the blog will allow key collaborators to reflect publicly on their experience of the project. This will enable the blog to act as an important forum for discussion among different user communities about the qualitative investigation of spatial relations embedded in literary texts, or the use of an integrated suite of visualization tools for reading a text spatially. Similar uses of previous project blogs have met with demonstrable success at both addressing the needs of, and in some ways constructing, user communities: the GAP project has had approx. 30,000 individual visits, while the Pelagios project has had almost 40,000. Both the Hestia2 blog and Hestia GapVis will have Google Analytics installed in order to keep a record of the number, type and geographical spread of the visits, and will use Facebook and Twitter in order to disseminate the project's outputs.

Lastly, by building free online learning materials around the Hestia GapVis resource, OpenLearn will greatly increase public awareness of and engagement with this output. In fact, by fully documenting the process of adapting the Hestia dataset to GapVis, the blog will permit anyone else to extend this reading platform to other texts of their choice, which have a geospatial component. This extensibility will have most impact on teachers and students; but publishers may also be interested in this reading platform for viewing texts on e.g. tablet computers.