Applying Semantic Web Technologies to Medieval Manuscript Research

Institut für Dokumentologie und Editorik (IDE) (2011) Applying Semantic Web Technologies to Medieval Manuscript Research. In: Kodikologie und Paläographie im digitalen Zeitalter 2 - Codicology and Palaeography in the Digital Age 2. Schriften des Instituts für Dokumentologie und Editorik, 3. Books on Demand (BoD), Norderstedt, pp. 117-131. ISBN 978-3-8423-5032-8

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Abstract

Medieval manuscript research is a complex, fragmented, multilingual field of knowledge, which is difficult to navigate, analyse and exploit. Though printed sources are still of great importance and value to researchers, there are now many services on the Web, some commercial and many in the public domain. At present, these services have to be consulted separately and individually. They employ a range of different descriptive standards and vocabularies, and use a variety of technologies to make their information available on the Web. This chapter proposes a new approach to organizing the international collaborative infrastructure for interlinking knowledge and research about medieval European manuscripts, based on technologies associated with the Semantic Web and the Linked Data movement. This collaborative infrastructure will be an open space on the Web where information about medieval manuscripts can be shared, stored, exchanged and updated for research purposes. It will be possible to ask large-scale research questions across the virtual global manuscript collection, in a quicker and more effective way than has ever been feasible in the past. The proposed infrastructure will focus on building links between data and will provide the basis for new kinds of services which exploit these data. It will not aim to impose a single metadata standard on existing manuscript services, but will build on existing databases and vocabularies. The article describes the architecture, services and data which will comprise this infrastructure, and discusses strategies for making th challenging and exciting goal a reality.

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