Mapping Change: A Temporal and Semantic Knowledge Base of Scottish Gazetteers
摘要
We introduce MappingChange, a temporal and semantically enriched knowledge graph constructed from the “Gazetteers of Scotland” collection between 1803 and 1901. Although digitised into over 13,000 OCR-aligned ALTO/METS XML files, the collection lacks the structural information needed for effective analysis: it consists of only page-level text, lacks article-level segmentation, fails to identify places referenced within articles, and provides no semantic links connecting related entries across editions. These gaps significantly hinder reuse, especially for longitudinal studies of how historical places have evolved. To overcome these challenges, we employ edition-specific prompt strategies with large language models to extract over 45,000 article-level place descriptions. These entries are organized into a knowledge graph modelled on the Heritage Textual Ontology, capturing both bibliographic metadata and textual content. We further enriched this knowledge graph by 1) connecting semantically related entries across editions and aligning them with Wikidata and DBpedia, and 2) identifying referenced places within articles and assign modern coordinates to facilitate spatial analysis. We envision that MappingChange will serve as a foundation for downstream research in the humanities and digital humanities, with an impact extending well beyond academic settings.