Memory Mapper: Exploring Commercial Models for Digital Spatial Humanities Research Infrastructure

This research project is intended to explore commercial models for offering Memory Mapper, an open-source web-based mapping tool for documenting places and their histories created by researchers at the Bartlett Faculty for the Built Environment, University College London, as a service to researchers and teachers in the universities sector and professionals in the Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) sector. Memory Mapper was developed on the basis of work conducted as part of the Survey of London Whitechapel Initiative (https://surveyoflondon.org/), an innovative web-based public history project which used interactive mapping and crowdsourcing techniques to engage members of the public in the creation of collectively-produced historical accounts of the history of the built environment in
Whitechapel. Subsequent funding from UCL and from the EPSRC has resulted in a number of follow-on maps using the software, most prominently the Memory Map of the Jewish East End (https://jewisheastendmemorymap.org) and City of Women London (https://cityofwomenlondon.org/).

Through these projects and through the fostering of a community of independent Memory Mapper projects in the Higher Education, GLAM and Community sectors, we have evidence that there is a market appetite for the tool. Through a combination of in-depth market research, user testing with current Memory Map users, participatory action research workshops and semi-structured interviews, this project will provide the specification for a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for the next iteration of Memory Mapper, and will establish the empirical basis on which further funding can be sought.