Frequently Asked Questions

What kind of documents can I upload?

Presently, Recogito supports:

• Plaintext files (.txt extension)
• TEI/XML encoded text (.xml extension)
• Images in JPEG, TIFF and PNG format
• BETA Images served via IIIF (single images or collection manifests)
• BETA Spreadsheet data in CSV format (using comma, semicolon, tab or | as delimiting character)

Note that all text-based formats (txt, xml, csv) must be UTF-8 character encoded files.

Can I upload unlimited documents?

There is no fixed limit to the number of documents you upload. However, standard private workspaces are limited to a total size of 200 MB. Please get in touch with us if you need more space.

If you are working with images, you might want to consider hosting them yourself, outside of Recogito, through a IIIF service (see below). In this case, the 200 MB size limit in Recogito does not apply.

Where can I find IIIF hosting for my images?

A number of open source solutions are available for operating your own IIIF image service. Note, however, that you will need access to your own server, and server administration skills in order to set this up.

As a managed alternative, we recommend IIIFHosting.com, an online service that offers IIIF image hosting, drag-and-drop upload, and packages for various sized projects.

Are there legal considerations to using Recogito?

UK Copyright Law permits the use of third party material for "private and research study purposes". (Please check copyright or similar laws for your own country!) Uploaded documents are hosted in your private workspace, and will be accessible only to you - unless you choose to share them with other users. If you have verified that the document is not under copyright, you can make it publicly available by ticking the "Visible to all" option in your document sharing options. (Please refer to our Terms and Conditions for additional information.)

Copyright is an automatic right. But other licensing arrangements may also apply and you must take legal responsibility for adhering to all of them. In particular, be aware that some "open" Creative Commons licenses have a "No Derivatives" clause which according to most copyright laws includes annotations. You must not make such works public within Recogito without prior consent from the copyright owner.

What data is available once I make a document "Visible to All?"

Once you choose to make a document "Visible to All" via the document sharing options, everyone who knows the URL to the document will be able to view it. (There is no need to log in to Recogito or have an account on the system.) The following data will be accessible:

• Annotation view, i.e. the text or image, with annotations included
• Map view
• Annotation stats, including the stats CSV and JSON download options
• Download options, i.e. annotation bulk downloads in CSV, RDF, GeoJSON, etc. format

Can I work with other people at the same time?

Yes, you can work concurrently on the same document with other people. But at present you will not be able to see other people's edits in real-time. Changes made by others will only be visible after you refresh the page.

What is Linked Data and how does it relate to Recogito?

Linked Data is a way of connecting online resources that have some element in common. In our case, that common element is Place: Recogito connects places referenced in documents to online gazetteers and makes annotations available to you in a Linked Data format called the Open Annotation Data Model. Linked Data is also the method that is used under the hood of Recogito to align and connect different gazetteers with each other.

What is a gazetteer?

To paraphrase from the introductory chapters of Berman, Mostern & Southall, Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers: Most simply, a gazetteer is a list of places. A digital gazetteer, in particular, will often include names, coordinates and sometimes feature types for each place. Today, digital gazetteers are the basis for much of the spatial search and visualization we all have come to take for granted on the Web.

Which gazetteers are available in Recogito?

The following gazetteers are currently available:

• HistoGIS - A GIS repository for historical temporalized spatial data by the Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities
• Pleiades - Pleiades Gazetteer of the Ancient World
• CHGIS - China Historical GIS
• DPP Places - Places from the Digitizing Patterns of Power project
• DARE - Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire
• MoEML - Map of Early Modern London
• HGIS de las Indias - Historical-Geographic Information System for Spanish America (1701-1808)
• GeoNames - A subset of GeoNames populated places, countries and first-level administrative divisions
• Kima - Kima Historical Gazetteer - place names in the Hebrew script

How do I know which gazetteer to use?

Different gazetteers often provide overlapping, but also complementary (and sometimes even conflicting) information about places for particular time periods or regions. We recommend that you select the gazetteer you feel best reflects the document that you are working on (e.g. Pleiades or DARE for Ancient history, GeoNames for contemporary material) and aim to stay consistent as much as possible throughout the document.

We will add additional gazetteers to Recogito over time. Moreover, we are working actively with the gazetteer community to assist in the alignment of gazetteers - which means that place references you associate with one gazetteer will automatically become associated with relevant places in other gazetteers in Recogito.

What Named Entity Recognition are you using?

Presently, our hosted service at recogito.pelagios.org integrates the Stanford CoreNLP recognition engine, with the default language model for English only. However, Recogito features a plugin interface for integrating additional languages and recognition engines. Do get in touch with us if you want to work with us on extending Recogito's NER capabilities!

How can I cite Recogito in a publication?

Please list our URL and the time you accessed it, as in the following example:

Recogito, an initiative of Pelagios Commons, http://recogito.pelagios.org/ (accessed 27 April 2024)