London calling: GIS, VR, and the Victorian period

The Bolles Collection of Tufts University represents a comprehensive and integrated collection of sources on the history and topography of Victorian London. Texts, images, maps, and three-dimensional reconstructions are all interconnected forming a body of material that transcends the limits of print publication and exploits the flexibility of the electronic medium. The Perseus Digital Library has incorporated geographic information system and virtual reality technologies in a set of tools intended to help readers synthesize and visualize the numerous temporal and spatial interconnections between Bolles Collection materials. The tools, which are applicable to any large assemblage of related documents, also help readers grasp the complex temporal-spatial interactions that shape historical materials in general.