We’ve written about the pleiades project a couple of times before:
Organized by the Ancient World Mapping Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, U.S.A., Pleiades brings together a global community of scholars, students and enthusiasts to expand and enhance continually the information originally brought together by the Classical Atlas Project (1988-2000) to support the publication of the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (R.J.A. Talbert, ed., Princeton, 2000).
Last month they released the first batch of their data, and what a great job they’re doing. The material is impeccably laid out, in particular:
- They’ve ensured there’s a proper open license on each collection of material (in this case a CC Attribution license)
- They’ve made the material available in bulk as well as through a search facility
More information about the datasets available as well as links can be found on the pleiades site or on the ckan pleiades package page. This really is a perfect example of what an open knowledge project can be and so a big well done to the pleiades team for the work so far (and long may it continue!).
Rufus Pollock is Founder and President of Open Knowledge.
