Encyclopedia Virginia is an online reference work about the Commonwealth of Virginia; it aggregates in a single resource information on Virginia history, business, politics, and geography, plus the state’s proud heritage in the arts, religion, culture, and folk life. As the Encyclopedia grows, it will also explore areas of science, medicine, education, and technology and interpret the state’s significance to the people of Virginia, the nation, and the world.
Each entry in Encyclopedia Virginia has an associated timeline that contains temporal and geographic information. These data points are not tied exclusively to the entry in which they appear. This intentional separation allows the information to be repurposed. For example, the EV homepage has a “Today in Virginia” section which lists what Virginia-related event occurred on each current day.
This presentation will explore the possibilities, challenges and visualization opportunities inherent in this large time/space dataset. The presentation will cover applications currently in development at EV making use of this data including an interactive timeline/map. Near-term goals for leveraging this data will also be discussed such as a geographically-aware mobile application.
