With around 8,000 titles still extant today, Chinese Local Gazetteers are one of the primary resources for studying Chinese history, spanning a time period of more than 1,000 years. Although local gazetteers are well studied, the sheer volume of information contained within them poses both a unique challenge and an opportunity for scholars. Accordingly, the Local Gazetteers Working Group at the MPIWG has been transforming these printed materials into an enhanced scholarly database for new forms of digital historical analysis, creating a suite of digital tools that allow large-scale research with Local Gazetteers to answer key questions in Chinese history: the Local Gazetteers Research Tools (LoGaRT).

In this interview, LoGaRT project manager Sean Wang gives an overview of LoGaRT and explains why digital tools and open access to sources are so important for the humanities and historical research.