Geograph British Isles
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Geograph British Isles is a web-based project initiated in March 2005 to create a freely accessible archive of geographically located photographs of the British Isles. The project excludes the Channel Islands which are not geographically within the British Isles. Photographs in the Geograph collection are chosen to illustrate significant or typical features of each 1 km x 1 km grid square in the British national grid reference system and the Irish national grid reference system.[1] There are 330,184 such grid squares containing at least some land.[2] Each page uses a Geo microformat.[3]
Geographs are being collected for Great Britain and Ireland, and a similar project is planned for New Zealand. The Channel Islands fall outside Britain's grid system, but may be geographed using their local UTM grid.
The project is sponsored by the Ordnance Survey, and extracts from the OS Landranger 1:50,000 maps illustrate the grid square pages.
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[edit] Contributions
Photographs can be contributed by any registered user, although they must be approved by a panel of moderators before appearing on the website. The activity of taking photographs for the project is known as geographing. All images are licensed by the contributors using the Creative Commons cc-by-sa 2.0 licence which permits modification and redistribution of the images under certain conditions.
As an incentive to increase coverage, participants are awarded a point each time they contribute the first photograph classified as a geograph to a grid square. There is, however, no limit to the number of images per square, and some squares have over 100. A weekly competition runs in the members-only forums to select the Geograph of the Year from photographs taken that week. The annual winners are 'Horsey Drainage Mill, Horsey, Norfolk' by Rodney Burton (2007) and 'Islands of mud, East Hoyle Bank' by Peter Craine (2006).[4][5]
Some participants combine geographing with other outdoor location sports such as geocaching, trigpointing, benchmarking, and peak bagging.
[edit] Types of image
Geograph images are categorised by site moderators as:
- Geograph – an image which usefully illustrates or characterises the area in which it was taken;
- First geograph – the first image uploaded of a particular grid square which meets the requirements to be a geograph;
- Supplemental – an image which adds useful information about a square but which does not meet the requirements of a geograph; this includes close-ups, interior, underground and aerial shots, and shots taken from outside the grid square.[1]
Some of the common themes for geograph photos include:
- Physical landscape
- Human land use
- Built environment
- Social interaction
- Geology
- Flora and fauna
- Local history[1]
[edit] Statistics
As of April 2008, the project had over 750,000 photographs contributed by more than 6500 photographers, covering 67% of grid squares in the British Isles (85% of those in Great Britain and 17% of those in Ireland).[2] Photographed squares had an average of 3.4 images.[6]
Milestones include:
- 8 April 2008: 750,000 images[7]
- 13 March 2008: Two-thirds coverage of entire British Isles[7]
- 25 July 2007: 500,000 images[8]
- 25 June 2007: 75% coverage of Great Britain[9]
- 30 May 2007: 10% coverage of Ireland[7]
- 5 March 2007: 50% coverage of entire British Isles[7]
- 3 October 2006: 250,000 images[10]
- 17 August 2006: 50% coverage of Great Britain[11]
- 1 March 2006: 25% coverage of entire British Isles[12]
- 21 December 2005: 25% coverage of Great Britain[7]
[edit] Awards
The Geograph site was awarded the Yahoo (UK & Ireland) Travel Find of the Year 2006.[13]
[edit] References
- ^ a b c Hawgood D. Geograph or supplemental (June 2007) (accessed 13 March 2008)
- ^ a b Geograph: Overview Statistics for Geograph British Isles (accessed 14 April 2008)
- ^ Geo examples, in the wild (accessed 19 August 2007)
- ^ Geograph Forums: GotY 2007 - The Final three! (accessed 7 February 2008)(Registration required)
- ^ Geograph Forums: Geograph of the Year 2006 (accessed 19 August 2007) (Registration required)
- ^ Geograph: Progress So Far (accessed 14 April 2008)
- ^ a b c d e Geograph Forums: Antici - - - - pation! (accessed 14 April 2008) (Registration required)
- ^ Geograph Forums: Half a million images (accessed 19 August 2007) (Registration required)
- ^ Geograph Forums: 75% of Great Britain Complete (accessed 19 August 2007) (Registration required)
- ^ Geograph Forums: A quarter of a million images! (accessed 19 August 2007) (Registration required)
- ^ Geograph Forums: 50% of Great Britain completed (accessed 19 August 2007) (Registration required)
- ^ Geograph Forums: 25% Total Coverage (accessed 19 August 2007) (Registration required)
- ^ Yahoo: Travel Find of the Year 2006: Geograph (accessed 19 August 2007)
