ABSTRACT
Digital technologies present new opportunities for modeling, analyzing and interpreting the geographical information contained within texts. This chapter explores some of these opportunities, focusing particularly on the modeling, analysis and interpretation of geographical information in texts, and on the difficulties of integrating space in textual analysis. Integration through location allows additional data to be added to the model of the study area. Geographic information systems (GIS) have shown themselves to be well suited to modeling tabular data for which precise locations can be determined. The major challenge in converting a text into a format suitable for use in GIS is usually providing a co-ordinate that can be used as spatial data for each placename. In GIS, a “map” in the form of a layer of geo-referenced data is produced early in the research process, and it is explored, corrected, queried and enhanced throughout the research process.
