Although the Ordnance Survey has itself been the subject of historical research, scholars have not systematically used its maps as primary sources of information. This is partly for disciplinary reasons and partly for the technical reason that high-quality maps have not until recently been available digitally, geo-referenced, and in color. A final, and crucial, addition has been the creation of item-level metadata which allows map collections to become corpora which can for the first time be interrogated en masse as source material. By applying new Computer Vision methods leveraging machine learning, we outline a research pipeline for working with thousands (rather than a handful) of maps at once, which enables new forms of historical inquiry based on spatial analysis. Our ‘patchwork method’ draws on the longstanding desire to adopt an overall or ‘complete’ view of a territory, and in so doing highlights certain parallels between the situation faced by today’s users of digitized maps, and a similar inflexion point faced by their predecessors in the nineteenth century, as the project to map the nation approached a form of completion.

Questions of trust are increasingly important in relation to data and its use. The authors focus on humanities data and its visualization, through analysis of their own recent projects with museums, archives and libraries internationally. Their account connects the specifics of hands-on digital humanities work to larger epistemological questions. They discuss the sources of potential mistrust, and examine how different expectations and assumptions emerge depending on the use and user of the data; they offer a simple schema through which the implications may be traced. It is argued that vital issues of trust can be engaged with through design, which, rather than being conceived as a cosmetic finish, is seen as contributing insights and questions that affect the whole process. The article concludes with recommendations intended to be useful in both theory and practice.

The article is concerned with a central contribution of designing to information visualization in the digital humanities. The activity is characterized as one of externalization, instantiation in visible or tangible form of ideas. A spectrum of different interpretations of this process in the existing literature is discussed. The arguments are illustrated with recent practical examples from the authors’ own work in designing with a range of cultural organizations. The article concludes with reflections on how projects may best benefit from this work of design, empowering the designer as a co-researcher, alongside the historian, curator or other humanities scholar.

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The paper explores visualisation of "big data" from digitised museum collections and archives, focusing on the relationship between data, visualisation and narrative. A contrast is presented between visualisations that show "just the data" and those that present the information in such a way as to tell a story using visual rhetorical devices; such devices have historically included trees, streams, chains, geometric shapes and other forms. The contrast is explored through historical examples and a survey of current practice. A discussion centred on visualising datasets from the British Library, Science Museum and Wellcome Library is used to outline key research questions.Chronographics. Design. Narrative. Visual rhetoric.

This paper describes a prototype timeline tool designed for humanities researchers exploring digitised historical documents. The tool visualises keyword instances in context mapped by date, and can be used to explore commentary around themes through time. Through designing the tool and evaluating it with humanities scholars, the role of the designer in the digital humanities is explored. Interview evaluation with historians provides evidence for the tool's capacity to support historical research, but also raises design issues by pointing to the value of simple, minimal design in this domain for interpretability.

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