This project is a Foundation project within the AHRC-funded Towards a National Collection Programme.

This project aims to help cultural heritage organisations to use locations – such as where objects were made and used or the places they depict and describe – to connect diverse collections and to engage researchers and public audiences in new ways. The project uses geospatial data in the form of coordinates to connect and visualise the digital records of Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums and organisations managed by the Historic Environment. By digital records we refer to web pages, digitised content or structured data that represent objects, documents, sites or buildings.

Our map software (named Peripleo) visualises these records and offers an easy-to-use method for diverse users to access meaningful data. It is also simple to create maps of your own digital records. Peripleo is based on a free and simple hosting method, Github pages, and we have provided a prototype tool, Locolligo, to help you to prepare data for Peripleo. Please find out more by trying one of the examples below. The software and project as a whole build on visualisation and linked open data methodologies developed by the Pelagios Network of researchers, scientists and curators.

The project’s report (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7071654) and a journal article, Discovering the local in national cultural heritage collections (https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2113819) are now available.

Choose a Map:

VisitPlus

Connecting heritage visitor sites and collections

Early Egyptian coins in Northern Europe

Archaeological findspots

Heritage for All

Helping the public learn more about familiar locations

Hollar 1660

Mapped illustrations from an Early Modern gazetteer

The Travelling Bibles

European journeys of Ceolfrith's Anglo-Saxon bibles

Mapping Antiquity

The Antiquities Collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Mark16 Manuscripts

Manuscripts for the study of St Mark's Gospel

Mapping the Bronze Age

Micropasts: material in the Bronze Age Index

Thanks to various project partners and others, who may retain copyright in their respective sample datasets used in this software:

• English Heritage
• Historic England - contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2020.
• Historic Environment Scotland - Scottish Charity No. SC045925 © Crown copyright and database right 2020.
• Historic Royal Palaces
• Museum of London Archaeology
• The National Trust - Registered Charity in England & Wales No. 205846
• The Portable Antiquities Scheme - linked images Courtesy of the Portable Antiquities Scheme - © The British Museum.
• Viae Regiae - a volunteer-driven member project of the Pelagios Network
• Victoria Morris
• Valeria Vitale