Repository navigation
Write a geocode debug tool #189
Description
https://www.oldnyc.org/#720269f is geocoded to Brooklyn, but it clearly should be in Manhattan. What went wrong? It's not really clear to me. There is a "Brooklyn" subject on the NYPL page, but there's "Manhattan" in the title and backing text.
Some kind of CLI tool to step through the geolocation on one photo would be helpful for understanding this.
Activity
danvk commentedon Mar 9, 2026
For that particular photo, we have:
{ "id": "720269f", "uuid": "e90fcf50-c539-012f-936c-58d385a7bc34", "url": "https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dd-3ef1-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99", "photo_url": "https://images.nypl.org/?id=720269f&t=w", "date": "1931", "title": "General View - Manhattan - Greenwich Village - Washington Square Park.", "alt_title": [], "creator": "Fairchild Aerial Surveys, inc.", "subject": { "name": [], "temporal": [], "geographic": [ "Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)", "New York (N.Y.)", "Washington Square (New York, N.Y.)" ], "topic": [] }, "back_id": "720269b", "back_text": "An aerial view of Washington Square and its environs. This view includes an area east from Sixth Ave. (foreground) to Ave. B (far side of Tompkins Square; left background) and south from 10th (left) to Houston Streets (right diagonal).\n\nSeptember 7, 1931.\n\nFairchild Aerial Surveys, Inc.\n\nNeg. # 2374, Slide # 139\n", "back_text_source": "gpt", "source": "Photographic views of New York City, 1870's-1970's / Brooklyn" }The Brooklyn location is coming from
subject.geographic. This is clearly wrong on the library's side. Could I fix it? Not easily, but maybe I could ask GPT to guess the borough.