OpenStreetMap of Clare

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Paddy Casey
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OpenStreetMap of Clare

Post by Paddy Casey » Tue Sep 09, 2008 5:42 pm

The following may seem to have nothing to do with Clare's past but that is not the case. Scroll down if you are impatient to find out why.

There is a worldwide community of volunteers collecting geographic data and contributing that data to a project called OpenStreetMap (hereinafter OSM; see http://www.openstreetmap.org/ ). OpenStreetMap creates and provides free geographic data such as street maps to anyone who wants them. The project was started because most maps you think of as free actually have legal (e.g. copyright) or technical restrictions on their use, holding back people from using them in creative, productive, or unexpected ways. For example, if you want to tell people how to get to a historically interesting site which is in the middle of nowhere or has been reduced to a ruin which cannot be seen from more than 5 yards away (as many historically interesting sites tend to be), and if you know the precise geographical location of that site, you have few options for publishing the location of the site. If you use a modern-day map to do so you may well be infringing copyright and be liable for heavy penalties if the map owner has a deep pocket to pay lawyers.

In the case of County Clare the County Library has cut through this problem by providing us with an excellent set of online Ordnance Survey maps of the county from the 1835-42 era (go to http://www.clarelibrary.ie/index.htm and click on 'Maps' and take it from there). These maps are copyright-free so if you take a snippet from one of them to show where St. Someone's Well is located you won't be sued. I am constantly amused by the fact that these 1840s Ordnance Survey maps are still used in modern-day planning applications, a tribute to their quality. In fact, if you read the accounts of how those maps were drawn by pedantic cartographers out in the wilds in all weathers and without the modern-day aids (laser theodolites, aerial surveys, GPS, computer graphics, you name it) and then look at the intricate detail of their product you will boggle. I certainly do. I frequently compare the 1840s OS maps with the terrain and features of the bit of Clare I'm particularly interested in and everything is still there exactly where the 1840s mappers plotted it, even down to the rows of trees.

OpenStreetMap now offers an additional copyright-free resource for pinpointing historical sites in the County. The people who contribute to the project (you can start to be one today) simply move around their areas of interest in cars or on bicycles or on foot with GPS receivers and record the roads and points of interest and upload their data to the OSM database. Last year in Clare, for example, I had my GPS running while driving and walking around and I am now transferring my geographic data (roads, boreens, holy wells, cemeteries, churches, etc.) to the OSM database so that the precise location of these features becomes available to ClarePast-ologists worldwide over the WWW.

So if you are out in the County this week and have a GPS with you (it is becoming difficult to buy a mobile phone without a GPS receiver nowadays) and if you visit the site where the Great O'Someone camped with his followers on the night before the famous Battle of Droimcac Mór (1483-1486) why not record the position and contribute it to the OSM (I will sidestep the discussion as to how you know that this was the exact spot where the Great O'Someone camped, but you know what I mean). If everyone pitches in we will soon have a very precise map of the County's heritage in a form which anyone can read and understand. It will also be a resource which, like the 1840s Ordnance Survey maps on the Clare County Library site, can be used without fear of copyright lawsuits.

The whole thing is a bit geeky at the moment ('geek' is the slightly pejorative term; the enthusiasts call it 'cutting edge') but then text messaging was geeky only a few years ago and now the motorways are full of drivers text messaging at 70mph as they hurry to work.

Does this make sense ? I've be interested to hear from the experts on this forum who are familiar with the existing datasets, e.g. Dúchas, and can comment on their geographical accuracy and ease of use for finding one's way to a given monument.

Paddy

barbarad
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Joined: Tue Jul 08, 2008 9:05 pm

Re: OpenStreetMap of Clare

Post by barbarad » Sat Sep 27, 2008 2:30 am

Hi,

I'm back in the US now after a couple of weeks in Clare. We did lots of field work re. holy wells, I had a Garmin NUVI and my husband had his I-phone, we were cutting-edge tech !

I will look into uploading to OSM. The OS maps on the library website proved more accurate than the current Discovery Series in a couple of instances. Too bad I couldn't use my Mac to view them. Actual co-ordinates would have been a great help in finding the wells.. but now we don't want to upset them and have them move across the road or anything like that, do we? I guess plotting the co-ordinates won't offend them, will it?

Beannacht, (my new favorite word)

Barbara

Paddy Casey
Posts: 743
Joined: Wed Mar 28, 2007 3:53 pm
Location: Внешняя Громболия
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Re: OpenStreetMap of Clare

Post by Paddy Casey » Sat Sep 27, 2008 5:47 pm

Barbara,

You write ".....Actual co-ordinates would have been a great help in finding the wells.. but now we don't want to upset them and have them move across the road or anything like that, do we?"

In Ireland statues move. The physics (or metaphysics ?) of the phenomenon have never been clear to me but I imagine that similar behaviour might be expected of a holy well.

Paddy

P.S. Will you be posting the findings of your field work on wells here ?

barbarad
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue Jul 08, 2008 9:05 pm

Re: OpenStreetMap of Clare

Post by barbarad » Mon Sep 29, 2008 3:26 am

Yes, I do want to post up what I saw and learned. The best way I can think of is to go at it one well at a time. This isn't going to happen instantly... I'll be sending photographs to Maureen Comber to use on the website, too, as they get organized.

While there I wrote this to a friend in London:
"I have had wonderful luck in my ramblings, I have photographed wells that have been hidden in obscurity for many years.. and since they are not easy of access, they're likely to remain mostly hidden. The places, the feeling of a holy place, coming upon one after painful orienteering and a rough scramble is just indescribable. I've made friends with numerous dogs, donkeys, and cows, to the extent you can become friends with cows. And Irish weather is blessing us with sunshine."

which was to some extent an exaggeration, because many times I found a well by a diffiicult path and then discovered an easy path. They weren't so much hidden in obscurity as by my obtusity.

more soon,

Barbara

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