User Stories for the World-Historical Gazetteer

My work designing and developing the World-Historical Gazetteer (WHGaz [1]) is under way. This NEH‑funded 3‑year project is based at the University of Pittsburgh World History Center and directed by Professor Ruth Mostern. David Ruvolo is Project Manager, and Ryan Horne will contribute in his new post-doc role at the Center. I’m very pleased to serve as Technical Director, working from Denver.

The project actually comprises more than a gazetteer.  An official description of the project’s goals and components is forthcoming; in the meantime, its deliverables include:

A gazetteer, defined in the proposal as “a broad-but-shallow work of common reference consisting of some tens of thousands of place names referring to places that have existed throughout the world during the last five hundred years.”

Interfaces to the gazetteer, including

  • a public API;
  • a public web site providing graphical means for data discovery, download, and visualization, and serving as a communication venue for the community of interest;
  • a web-based administrative interface for adding and editing data

An “ecosystem”, described as “a growing and open ended collection of affiliated spatially aware world historical projects,” seeded by two pilot studies concerning the Atlantic World and the Asian Maritime World

Models, formats, vocabularies. The conceptual and logical data models, data formats (e.g. GeoJSON-T), and controlled vocabularies (e.g. place types) developed for the project will be aligned with solid existing resources and published alongside data

Documentation. Software developed for the project will be maintained in a public GitHub repository. Additional documentation will be produced in the form of research reports published on the website and scholarly articles appearing in relevant journals.

What, for whom, and why

One of our first steps is developing “user stories” for the project, an element of the Agile development method that is a simple and effective way of capturing high-level requirements from users’ perspectives. I polled developers of some of our cognate projects (Pelagios, PeriodO, Pleiades) and added ideas stemming from their experiences to my own in creating the following preliminary list. If you can think of others that aren’t accounted for, please add them in a comment or email me. In my own streamlined version of Agile (Agile-lite?), user stories lead more or less directly to schematic representations of features supporting functions, then to coding. Evidence of streamlining is found in the detail already in place under items 18 and 19 (thanks, Ryan Shaw).

The next appearance of the features suggested by these stories will be in ordered lists of GitHub “issues” – coming soon.

Users
user: anyone of the following
researcher: academic or journalistic
editor: of WHGaz data
developer: anyone building software interfaces to WHGaz services
hobbyist: amateur historians, genealogists, general public
teacher: at any level

User stories

  1. As a {user}, I want to {view results of searches for place names in a map+time-visualization application} in order to {discover WHGaz contents}
  2. As a {user}, I want to {discover resources related to a search result} in order to {learn more about the place and available scholarship about it}
  3. As a {user}, I want to {learn about the WHGaz project: its motivations, participants, methods, work products, timeline} in order to {determine its quality and relevance to my purposes; see where my tax dollars are going}
  4. As a {user}, I want to {suggest additions to the WHGaz} in order to {make the resource more complete/useful}
  5. As a {researcher} I want to {publish my specialist gazetteer data for ingest by centralized index(es)} in order to {make my data discoverable by place and optionally, by period}
  6. As a {researcher} I want to {search a geographic area (i.e. space rather than place)} in order to {find sources relating to places in this area}
  7. As a {researcher} I want to {find historical source documents, incl. by keyword search} in order to {identify which places they refer to}
  8. As a {researcher} I want to {compare historical sources} in order to {see how they might be related to another through common references to place}
  9. As a {researcher} I want to {compare the geographical relationships (and names) represented in ancient texts with historical and modern representations}
  10. As a {researcher/developer} I want {different options for re-using data (from data downloads, to APIs and embeddable widgets} in order to {enrich my own work/online publication}
  11. As a {researcher/developer} I want to {locate individual or multiple authority record identifiers for toponyms tagged in source material} in order to {find related research data}
  12. As a {researcher/developer}, I want to {retrieve WHGaz data in any quantity (filtered set, complete dump) according to multiple search parameters, using web form(s) or a RESTful query} in order to {re-use the data for any purposes, according to WHGaz license terms}
  13. As a {researcher/developer}, I want to {learn how to construct API queries} in order to {incorporate WHGaz data in my analyses/software}
  14. As a {researcher/hobbyist} I want to {embed a WHGaz map in a wordpress blog}
  15. As a {researcher/hobbyist} I want to {display places and movements (!) presented in specific texts} in order to {understand the spatial-temporal context of a text}
  16. As a {teacher} I want {quick lookup tools linked to authoritative information} in order to {use the data in teaching}
  17. As an {editor}, I want to {add and edit place records} in order to {make the WHGaz resource more complete/accurate/useful}
  18. As a {developer} I want to {query WHGaz programmatically, returning GeoJSON/GeoJSON-T features in JSON lines format, each having 1) a “properties” object including (a) an identifier, (b) one preferred label and one or more alternate labels (w/optional language tags), (c) name and URLs of the gazetteers to which it belongs; 2) a geometry object; and 3) a “when” object describing temporal extent} in order to {use external gazetteer data in the my (PeriodO) client interface}
    • Allow querying by:
      • providing text to be matched against feature labels
      • specifying a rectangular bounding box (option to include all intersecting features or only those contained within it
  1. As a {developer} I want to {query WHGaz as above via a GUI, with option to filter results by gazetteer} in order to {browse and/or download records}
    • Entering text into the text input should display a list of matching feature labels, in sections titled by gazetteer name
    • Hovering results list should display/highlight feature on map; zoom to feature (?)
    • Selecting a particular result from the list should raise popup with info about it
    • The map display needs to support custom tile sets including the Ancient World Mapping Center’s.

[1] WHGaz is an unofficial short form used in this post; official naming will undoubtedly ensue

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