Linking up the ancients

Back to index page

Previous article: UK e-Researchers aid efforts to understand climate change

Next article: New development for GridSAM

Textual material, whether written on papyrus or inscribed on stone, provides a valuable source of information about the ancient world of Greece and Rome. For many years, researchers have produced digital versions of these texts, but the resulting resources are scattered and, in many cases, are difficult to access. Each resource is a fragment of a bigger picture that would prove much more valuable to researchers if it were accessible. Putting the fragments together is the goal of the ENGAGE-funded LaQuAT (Linking and Querying Ancient Texts) project.

The sheer diversity of the material hinders efforts to integrate it. Data is often stored in relational databases (as XML marked-up texts), but may also be represented using any number of diverse schemas or obsolete formats. The sheer variety of humanities data and research means that—when standards are used—a certain degree of flexibility is required in their application. Moreover, research in the humanities, by its very nature, is inter-disciplinary. There will inevitably be diversity of representation when information is gathered from different domains and for different purposes, making integration that much harder. A final consideration is a social one. Communities of scholars may be averse to anything that affects the integrity of their resources. To be accepted by the community the integration initiative must respect this autonomy.

The LaQuAT project is developing a demonstrator that will provide researchers of Greek and Roman antiquity with integrated views of diverse and scattered data by using OGSA-DAI to overcome data-integration issues.

The material used in the experiment includes the Projet Volterra database of late Roman legal texts, the HGV database of Greek papyri excavated in Egypt, and a collection of inscriptions from the Roman city of Aphrodisias. These resources overlap in terms of time, places and people, so an integrated view would prove very fruitful for researchers.

Mark Hedges, LaQuAT.

www.tinyurl.com/6dnha6