Tim Sherratt
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wragge.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy
Tim Sherratt
@wragge.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy
410 followers 21 following 680 posts
I’m a historian and hacker who researches the possibilities and politics of digital cultural collections.

My main project at the moment is the #GLAMWorkbench […]

🌉 bridged from https://hcommons.social/@wragge on the fediverse by https://fed.brid.gy/
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wragge.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy
Double rainbow!!!!
Colour photograph of a very bright rainbow over Hobart. There's a fainter second rainbow as well. Zoomed in view of the very bright rainbow that seems to end at the Wrest Point Casino!
November 27, 2025 at 6:39 AM
wragge.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy
What sorts of things do georeferenced maps make possible? This interface turns a street address into a point, finds georeferenced maps from the SLV that include that point, then displays the historic maps with a marker showing the location of the modern address. #slvresidency
Screenshot of prototype interface. In the header there's a modern map showing a street address. Under the heading "my house" there's six digitised maps displayed. On each historic map, a marker indicates the street address.
November 23, 2025 at 3:50 AM
wragge.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy
Today was a bit frustrating in #slvresidency work. But I've now got more collection items into Datasette/Spatialite so I can make spatial queries, including the Committee for Urban Action photos and the georeferenced maps. I'm adding a series of canned […]

[Original post on hcommons.social]
Screenshot of Datasette interface showing three loaded databases named: "georeferenced maps", "cua" and "newspapers".
November 21, 2025 at 1:15 PM
wragge.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy
There was a glitch in Allmaps geojson files that meant I haven't been getting the correct coordinates of SLV georeferenced maps for the last week or so. All fixed now, so you'll notice a lot more blue boxes on the dashboard!
Screenshot of digital basemap with many transparent blue polygons of various shapes and sizes overlaid on it. Each polygon shows the bounds and position of a georeferenced map.
November 21, 2025 at 12:52 PM
wragge.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy
And now in a database so I can do place and distance queries...
Screenshot of prototype interface display SLV collection material relating to a specific place. Under "my house" are entries from the Sands and MacDougal directories. Under "my suburb" are some photos and details of local newspapers.
November 18, 2025 at 1:14 PM
wragge.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy
A few thousand newspapers from SLV geolocated by place of publication/distribution. This includes digitised and non-digitised titles.
Screen capture of a digital basemap of Victoria with markers and cluster markers spread across the state. A number on the custer maker indiciates the total number of markers in that region. The totals range from 3,785 in central Melbourne to a single marker in the Wimmera area.
November 18, 2025 at 4:34 AM
wragge.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy
Starting to bring various bits of my #slvresidency together in a new prototype...
Screenshot of a prototype app. The app is headed "my place". In the top right hand corner there's a map, with a box where you can enter an address. The address value is "Brunswick Street Fitzroy". The map is centred on Fitzroy and a marker shows the position of Brunswick street. Below the header are two sections: "my street" and "my suburb". The my street section is display entries from the Sands & Mac directories for Brunswick Street. The suburb section is showing a small map display the bounds of Fitzroy, and a number of images of Fitzroy from the SLV collection.
November 15, 2025 at 6:36 AM
wragge.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy
Gippsland map lovers have joined the party. https://wragge.github.io/slv-allmaps/dashboard.html
Screen capture of a digital map of eastern Victoria covered in blue boxes indicating the positions of georeferenced maps. There is a cluster in East Gippsland.
November 12, 2025 at 10:43 AM
wragge.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy
300 up! https://wragge.github.io/slv-allmaps/dashboard.html
As of 3.11 pm on 8 November 2025, 300 maps have been georeferenced from 248 collection items.
November 8, 2025 at 4:25 AM
wragge.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy
We've hit the hundred mark!!
Screenshot of dashboard with details of georeferenced maps from the State Library of Victoria. The text reads: "As of 3.11 pm on 2 November 2025, 103 maps have been georeferenced from 67 collection items.". Below the text is a map with locations of georeferenced maps marked as blue rectangles.
November 2, 2025 at 4:33 AM
wragge.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy
Help me turn the State Library Victoria's digitised maps into data!

As part of my residency at the SLV LAB, I've been experimenting with using Allmaps and @IIIF to georeference the Library's maps. Georeferencing relates a digitised map to real world […]

[Original post on hcommons.social]
Screenshot of a webpage headed "Georeferencing maps from the State Library of Victoria". The page includes an image of a historic map overlaid on a modern digital basemap, and a big blue button that invites visitors to "View the project dashboard to see the latest progress". The introductory text reads: "This is an experimental project developed during my time as Creative Technologist-in-Residence at the SLV LAB. While playing around with IIIF and AllMaps, I wondered if it might be possible to connect a few things up and make it easy for people to georeference SLV's digitised maps. This is the result!".
October 30, 2025 at 11:51 PM
wragge.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy
Help me turn the State Library of Victoria's digitised maps into data! https://wragge.github.io/slv-allmaps/ (bit of a soft launch, so let me know if you see any errors in the documentation...)
Screenshot of a webpage headed "Georeferencing maps from the State Library of Victoria". The page includes an image of a historic map overlaid on a modern digital basemap, and a big blue button that invites visitors to "View the project dashboard to see the latest progress". The introductory text reads: "This is an experimental project developed during my time as Creative Technologist-in-Residence at the SLV LAB. While playing around with IIIF and AllMaps, I wondered if it might be possible to connect a few things up and make it easy for people to georeference SLV's digitised maps. This is the result!".
October 30, 2025 at 5:47 AM
wragge.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy
Feeling a bit pleased with this latest prototype for my #slvresidency – it's a userscript that adds links to georeference digitised maps in the SLV collection using AllMaps. If an item has already been georeferenced it embed the AllMaps viewer to show the […]

[Original post on hcommons.social]
Screenshot of the State Library of Victoria's digitised file viewer, showing an extra section headed 'Georeferencing' added by the userscript. The section includes buttons to edit the georeferencing using the AllMaps Editor, and view the results using the AllMaps Viewer. It also embeds the AllMaps viewer in an iframe, showing the georeferenced map overlaid on a modern basemap, skewed to match coordinates.
October 28, 2025 at 1:41 AM
wragge.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy
We said goodbye to this beautiful girl today...
Photo of Molly, a black labrador, looking serious. Photo of Molly, a black labrador, looking happy on a sunny day. Photo of Molly, a black labrador, looking slightly crazed at the beach. Photo of Molly, a black labrador, looking totally crazy at home.
October 22, 2025 at 6:22 AM
wragge.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy
Ok, next step for the SLV Committee for Urban Action photos – I've finally managed to get them loaded into a sqlite/spacialite db, so I can run spatial queries like finding the number of photographed roads within a given radius from a point.
Screenshot of CUA road segment data in Datasette, showing the results of a spacial query – roads within 2000 metres of a point at the centre of Melbourne. The results include a 'distance' column added by the query and are order from closest to furtherest.
October 22, 2025 at 12:05 AM
wragge.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy
New prototype from my #slvresidency! This one lets you explore photos from the Committee for Urban Action collection by selecting one of the highlighted roads on a map of Victoria. It's very much work-in-progress and will probably change a lot, but you can […]

[Original post on hcommons.social]
Screen shot of my prototype CUA collection browser, showing a map of Melbourne with roads highlighted in blue. The currently selected road is highlighted in red. Below the map, photos are displayed in film strip style.
October 20, 2025 at 6:57 AM
wragge.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy
Found my mum and dad in the midst of building their first house in 1955 in Beaumaris... (and yes, built with their own hands)
Screenshot of results from the Sands and Macdougall directories showing a highlighted entry for 'Sherratt, Rnld. H' and the heading 'Houses being built' in Cromer Rd, Beaumaris.
October 17, 2025 at 10:58 AM
wragge.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy
Almost got a simple prototype for the CUA photos as well...
Screenshot of a work-in-progress, prototype interface for browsing digitised photos from the Committee for Urban Action collection at the SLV by selecting road segments on a map.
October 17, 2025 at 8:19 AM
wragge.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy
So that seems to be working... Online soon!
Screen capture showing search results from the Sands & Macdougall directories for Victoria, digitised by the State Library of Victoria. The results are from all the digitised volumes.
October 17, 2025 at 7:49 AM
wragge.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy
Hey Clunes, just wondering why this road has four different names within the space of a few hundred metres...
Screenshot from Open Street Map of a section of Clunes in Victoria showing a road whose name changes four times in the space of a few hundred metres. It goes from "Service Street", to "Cameron Street", to "Clunes-Campbelltown Road", and finally "Angus Street".
October 14, 2025 at 2:43 AM
wragge.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy
An example of some of the regional towns -- Castlemaine/Chewton.
Screen shot of a map of Victoria, showing Castlemaine and Chewton. Many of the streets in these two towns are highlighted in red, indicating that they have been linked with CUA photos digitised by the SLV.
October 11, 2025 at 6:23 AM
wragge.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy
First run of processing the SLV's 20,000+ digitised photos from the Committee for Urban Action to link them to geolocated road segments. A few oddities to investigate, but pretty good. Fitzroy and South Melbourne have been digitised, and a number of the goldfields towns, more will be added soon.
Screen shot of a map of Melbourne, showing Fitzroy and South Melbourne. Most of the streets in these two suburbs are highlighted in red, indicating that they have been linked with CUA photos digitised by the SLV.
October 11, 2025 at 6:20 AM
wragge.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy
More Tesseract tweaking -- I wasn't happy with the way the gap after runs of the same surname was being treated as a column divider, separating the name parts. Trawling through Tesseract's billions of config options I came across […]

[Original post on hcommons.social]
Side by side comparison of Tesseract OCR results. The text on the right has the surname 'Harris' repeated multiple times, separated from the given names which appear below. In the text of the right, the names are kept together.
October 9, 2025 at 11:29 AM
wragge.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy
Sample of text extracted from PDF using PyMuPDF, using default settings. The text includes a lot of white space and it's difficult to make out the rows.
October 7, 2025 at 6:13 AM
wragge.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy
Spotlight sure has changed...
Screen shot of a sponsored ad for Spotlight which features nunchucks, handcuffs, and a sword for sale.
October 2, 2025 at 6:53 AM