Wednesday, May 11

Silk Road in Georgia
Media Abashidze, Georgian Academy of Sciences; Merab Labadze, Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia; and Tamari Tordia, Tbilisi Institute of Asia and Africa

Spatial Variation in Child Sex Ratios in China
William Lavely, University of Washington

ISpheres: A New Way of Delivering Humanities Data
Ian Johson, University of Sydney

GIS as a Tool for Management of Cultural Heritage
Julie Van Den Bergh, Ellen Cameron, Pamela Rogers, and Kennis Ho Sze Yip, Archaeological Assessments Ltd.

WebGIS-RBDL - A Rare Book Digital Library Supporting Spatio-Temporaral Retrieval
Ming Zhang, Peking University

www.mountainsongs.net
Gary Flint, ActAsia

JetPhoto
Robin Zhang, Atomix Technologies

Research at Bamiyan, Afghanistan
Susumu Morimoto, National Research Institute for Cultural Properties

Digital Maps of the Chinese Historical Cultural Cities
Cheng Yinong, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Digital Maps of the Chinese Historical Cultural Cities
Xiaocong Li, Center for Research on the Ancient Chinese History, Peking University

Report on Fo Guang Shan Buddhist Electronic Text Projects
Chihan Ding, Fo Guang Shan

Historical Change of South India from the Late-eighteenth Century
Tsukasa Mizushima, University of Tokyo

China Data Explorer
Shuming Bao, University of Michigan

The Silk Road along the rivers Mtkwari and Qvirila Rioni (Georgia) was used since the 4th c. B.C., when the trade-road from India to the Black Sea became active. Historical sources and archaeological evidences like filigree jewelry and the numerous samples of art, the Chinese porcelain and coins, Iranian pottery and later, the discovery of its imitations in the settlement sites of Middle Ages. points out the functioning of this road. In the 1st –2nd cc. A.D. these relations expanded and cultural innovations were obvious.

Spatial Variation in Child Sex Ratios in China
William Lavely, University of Washington
lavely@u.washington.edu

Child sex ratios have been on the rise in China since the late 1970s. This paper uses data from the 2000 census of China in conjunction with Geographic Information System (GIS) technology and spatial statistics to describe and analyze sub-national variation in the sex ratio of the population age 0-4 among approximately 2,400 county-level administrative units. We visualize the spatial patterns in sex ratio and investigate clustering using Luc Anselin’s suite of spatial statistics, LISA. We present spatial regression models of regional variation and discuss social and administrative explanations for the observed patterns.

ISpheres: A New Way of Delivering Humanities Data
Ian Johson, University of Sydney
johnson@acl.arts.usyd.edu.au

The poster will present the new ISpheres middleware developed as part of the Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories. ISPheres provide a truly distributed solution to serving a range of data - from images, sound, video and text to GIS datasets. Each ISphere can manage several heterogeneous collections of data resources and translate metadata specific to each collection into a common interoperable format.

ISpheres include their own web services, so they can be installed on any Internet-connected computer making its resources discoverable, searchable, transformable and downloadable. ISpheres can register themselves with local and global directories. Any ISphere can search and retrieve data from any other ISphere (subject to authorisation) and present the results in an integrated list of resources, as well as serving data on-demand to applications such as the TMJava mapping client.

ISpheres provide a new way of making information available to the outside world as DATA rather than web pages, with minimal effort, building on the work of TimeMap. As such they will be highly relevant to Humanities researchers with limited access to IT infrastructure.

Poster will discuss the use of GIS as a tool for preservation and managemnent of the archaeological site of the Plain of Jars in Lao PDR. The site is the focus of a UNESCO project and will be submitted for inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage list.

WebGIS-RBDL - A Rare Book Digital Library Supporting Spatio-Temporaral Retrieval
Ming Zhang, Peking University
mzhang@db.pku.edu.cn

In order to help researchers of humanities study the cultural ancient resources from temporal and geographical perspectives, we build WebGIS-RBDL at Peking University. In WebGIS-RBDL, metadata records and historical map layers are linked together, therefore users can get more Spatio-Temporal information about rare books through folded map layers, including historical maps, modern maps and landform images. In this paper, the architecture of WebGIS-RBDL is introduced. Then, the principles, rules and methods for Metadata Extracting and Correlating in WebGIS-RBDL are discussed. Furthermore, efficient tools to extract Spatio-Temporal information automatically from rare book metadata are developed. The WebGIS-RBDL can be extended to include other ancient collections easily. Our effort shows that using GIS in digital libraries is a new and promising method to build more effective user-friendly interfaces in digital libraries.

www.mountainsongs.net
Gary Flint, ActAsia
actasia@mountainsongs.net

Bilingual database website connecting ancient and modern Chinese poems to the sites where they were written through digital images and GIS data. No poster board, but can give online presentation.
http://www.mountainsongs.net

JetPhoto
Robin Zhang, Atomix Technologies
robin@atomixtech.com

JetPhoto is an efficient digital photo organizing and Web publishing platform. It integrates GPS technology to locate and link photos on geographical map.

Research at Bamiyan, Afghanistan
Susumu Morimoto, National Research Institute for Cultural Properties
susumu@nabunken.go.jp

National Research Institute for Cultral Properties has begun the research work at Bamiyan valley in Afghanistan. This poster will present the new results using GIS.

Digital Maps of the Chinese Historical Cultural Cities
Cheng Yinong, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
chengyinong@hotmail.com

This project will show the digital urban maps combined with documents, old maps, photos and other researching resources which concerned about the historic cultural cities in China. With the help of multimedia material linked up the urban maps on display, scholars will get valuable information about the Chinese city easily.

Digital Maps of the Chinese Historical Cultural Cities
Xiaocong Li, Center for Research on the Ancient Chinese History, Peking University
lixc@pku.edu.cn

These digital maps will display combined with the documents, old maps and images about the historic cultural cities in China.

Report on Fo Guang Shan Buddhist Electronic Text Projects
Chihan Ding, Fo Guang Shan
ding@hsilai.org

In the past 20 years, the Fo Guang Shan Sutra Editorial Department arduously finished compiling the Agama Canon, Ch¡¦an Canon, Prajna Canon, Pureland Canon, Dharma Flower Canon, and Buddhist Dictionary. Now the Fo Guang Shan Electronic Buddhist Texts Department is able to popularize the Fo Guang Buddhist Canons and Dictionary by using the state-of-the-art technology.

Historical Change of South India from the Late-eighteenth Century
Tsukasa Mizushima, University of Tokyo
zushima999@aol.com

Historical analysis with GIS into the changes of land-use and agrarian structure of south India from 1770s to the present.

China Data Explorer
Shuming Bao, University of Michigan
sbao@umich.edu

China Data Explorer is family of global spatial data visualization and analysis products about Earth and its people. China Data Explorer blends the data-rich collections of China provincial and county variables and maps from the China Data Center at the University of Michigan with TerraViva!®’s powerful data-viewing engine and tools to aid analysts, researchers, and instructors.