A Google-backed research project is to map out the relationship between location and literature, visualising works related to a specific era or place using Google Earth.

A joint project between the Open University, the University of Southampton and the University of California at Berkeley, Google Ancient Places will let users search for books related to specific geographic location during a particular time period, which are then visualised on Google Earth or Google Maps.

Academics will be able to access data compiled from a broad swathe of literature, including many out of print and rare material often kept just a small number of institutions. Researchers say the project will help to open up interested in history, classics and archaeology, but will also help develop new tools and research methods as well as expertise in using data in this way.



Photo by dfulmer on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Another project, led by Dr Alfonso Moreno at Magdalen College Oxford, is producing an index of translated European literature from 1701 to 1917. The Bibliotheca Academica Translationum will be used to research what Moreno describes as the changes in the transmission of knowledge in this period.

In total, Google has announced $1m (£665,000) in funding for 12 projects at 15 universities exploring 'digitised literature', which its defines as the "use of quantitative techniques to analyse large amounts of literature and identify trends over selected periods of time, by language, by geography and by topic".

A post by Google explains the projects in more detail, including one that aims to analyse all literature written in the Victorian era to identify trends in the use of vocabulary, while another could compare every version of the opening line to Virgil's Aeneid to see where and how often it has been quoted.

The researchers will also have support from various Google tools and technologies and access to parts of Google Books catalogue that includes book scans and histograms.

Clearly this project is very far from a direct money-spinner for Google but part of a well-orchestrated, long-term campaign to reassure and win over academics and publishers concerned by the scale and impact of Google's wider books initiative.