New App, Litlong, Lets You Take a Literary Tour of Edinburgh: Features 50,000 Book Excerpts

FYI. The Uni­ver­si­ty of Edin­burgh and Napi­er Uni­ver­si­ty have teamed up to cre­ate Lit­long, a web­site and mobile app that lets you explore Edin­burgh and its rich lit­er­ary tra­di­tion. Writes the Scot­tish news­pa­per The National:

From Sir Wal­ter Scott to Dame Muriel Spark, Ian Rankin and many oth­ers, the city of Edin­burgh has inspired count­less writ­ers over the cen­turies.

Now stu­dents, vis­i­tors and read­ers around the world will be able to explore the capital’s lit­er­ary high­lights via a free inter­ac­tive app con­tain­ing a stag­ger­ing 50,000 book excerpts.

The app guides users to 1,600 loca­tions in the city made famous by writ­ers from Robert Louis Steven­son to Irvine Welsh, then high­lights what they wrote about these parts of the city.

The resource, called Lit­Long, has excerpts from clas­sic and con­tem­po­rary texts so users can expe­ri­ence the Unesco City of Literature’s attrac­tions.

Made with “nat­ur­al lan­guage pro­cess­ing tech­nol­o­gy informed by lit­er­ary schol­ars’ input,” Lit­long draws on dig­i­tal col­lec­tions from across the world, includ­ing the British Library, the Nation­al Library of Scot­land, and Project Guten­berg. Access Lit­long here.

via The National

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