Geographically-aware information retrieval for collections of digitized historical maps

DIGMAP is a project focused on historical digitized maps. The project will develop a set of services, to be available in the Internet, based on reusable open-source software solutions. The main service will provide discovery and access to resources related to historical cartography, based on metadata from European national libraries and other relevant third part providers. These resources will comprise both physical and digitized objects. In the case of digitized maps, available metadata will be enriched by automatic and semi-automatic processes that will try to extract relevant indexing information from the images of the digitized maps, as also from any kind of associated text. This paper presents an early overview on the project, particularly focusing on the aspects related to geographical information retrieval.