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Using the Map View

When your items mention real-world places, the Archiver resolves those places against GeoNames and Getty TGN — producing latitude/longitude coordinates that can be plotted on a map.

The map view is available from:

  • The Search page — toggle from list view to map view (the map icon in the toolbar)
  • A Fond's detail page — see the geographic spread of everything in that fond
  • An individual item's detail page — pinpoint the places associated with one item

What you see​

Each pin represents a resolved place. The pin's size scales with the number of items associated with that location; clicking a pin opens a list of those items.

Common pin colours:

  • Blue — Place mentioned in content (e.g. extracted from text)
  • Gold — Creator location (where the item was made)
  • Grey — Subject heading place (less specific, used at fond / series level)

Hover any pin for the place name, source authority, and resolved URI.

Filtering​

The same filter panel as the Search list view applies to the map. Restricting by fond, date range, or category changes which pins appear.

A few patterns that work well:

  • Photo collection trace — filter to category Photograph, the map shows where photos were taken
  • Migration story — filter to one person (via the people mentioned authority), the map shows every place they're mentioned in
  • Estate boundaries — filter to a single accession, the map shows everywhere the estate's records reference

What's not on the map​

  • Modern administrative names that don't resolve to GeoNames. Very small hamlets, historical place names that no longer exist, or place names with ambiguous parents.
  • Items where the place wasn't extracted. If the AI didn't pull out a place name, there's nothing to plot. You can add places by hand on the item's edit screen.
  • Items pinned to a region rather than a point. "Derbyshire" gets a centroid; if you need polygons (administrative boundaries), the export is the way — the JSON export includes raw GeoNames URIs that visualisation tools can render.

Quality and corrections​

Place resolution is not perfect. Common issues:

  • Wrong place picked from several candidates — "Springfield" without a county will resolve to one of dozens. The model picks the most likely given other context in the document, but it can be wrong.
  • Modern coordinates for a historical site — Constantinople resolves to modern Istanbul. Useful for orientation; not strictly historically correct.
  • Bias toward English-speaking places — GeoNames coverage is densest where Wikipedia coverage is densest.

To correct: open the item, click the place pill, and use the Re-link option to pick a different candidate (or remove the link if nothing fits).

Exporting map data​

Every map view has an Export option that produces GeoJSON of the current view — useful for embedding in publications or GIS tools.