Exploring the women's history hidden in the street names of Berlin
Berlin has a great number of public spaces--streets, parks, etc--named for historical figures. While some of the famous figures from history obviously have been memorialized (e.g. Copernicus), Berlin also has hundreds of places named for figures who are not as well known, and in many cases, all but forgotten.
The motivation for this project came from walking Berlin's streets and seeing the names of women I didn't recognize, and realizing that women are all-too-often erased from history. What resources exist to remember them? Furthermore, how frequently are women memorialized vs men? Who were they, and when did they live? How are those women connected to the streets and places named after them, if at all?
This project seeks to create a knowledge base that can both contextualize and quantify the history of women remembered through public space in the city of Berlin. It is my hope that by keeping the project specific, it can retain focus over generality (e.g. explicitly not Wikipedia), contribute meaningfully to an academic body of work, and serve as a model for collaborative technological workflows in the humanities.
Contributing is subject to a strict Code of Conduct. You can read the Code of Conduct in English and German.
At the moment, contributing is closed. I will open the project for contributions once I get some basic things set up (hopefully in a short period of time). This project will have a Code of Conduct and licensing for both the technology and the content. I will set up contribution how-tos for both technical and academic flows once things are stabilized.
Initially, I am focusing on street names. But ultimately I'd like to capture the names of places, as well (e.g. parks, public transit stations, etc).
I will expand on this section as I flesh out the technical approach. Broadly speaking, I want to create a user-contributable knowledge repository using static site tools to minimize technical overhead and hosting costs.
I am explicitly and deliberately avoiding a Wikipedia-like workflow. The Wiki model has a number of flaws. It is much more difficult to host on a static site. Furthermore, the edit-by-anyone model has led to quite a bit of corruption of information, trolling, and academic dishonesty. Wikipedia isn't considered a reliable source for many reasons, but publish-before-review is a major one. Also, Wikis are terribly old-school in terms of basic formatting and usability. I dislike the model, and I believe that the peer review/pull request model is superior and will allow for better content moderation and accuracy.
I'd like to use OpenStreetMaps for both data sourcing and visualization, though I have zero experience in this. I am really just hoping on a shooting star at this point that it is compatible with my objectives. I'd also like to drive the content sourcing through Github.
This is a living README. As I proceed I will add, delete, and reorder content to put the project on the right track.