Archival Issues in Network Electronic Publications

published or submitted for publicatio

Exploring manuscripts: sharing ancient wisdoms across the semantic web

Recent work in digital humanities has seen researchers in-creasingly producing online editions of texts and manuscripts, particularly in adoption of the TEI XML format for online publishing. The benefits of semantic web techniques are un-derexplored in such research, however, with a lack of sharing and communication of research information. The Sharing Ancient Wisdoms (SAWS) project applies linked data prac-tices to enhance and expand on what is possible with these digital text editions. Focussing on Greek and Arabic col-lections of ancient wise sayings, which are often related to each other, we use RDF to annotate and extract seman-tic information from the TEI documents as RDF triples. This allows researchers to explore the conceptual networks that arise from these interconnected sayings. The SAWS project advocates a semantic-web-based methodology, en-hancing rather than replacing current workflow processes, for digital humanities researchers to share their findings and collectively benefit from each other’s work

An Overview of Electronic Publishing and Extensible Markup Language (XML)

Many knowledge-based organizations are expanding their publishing efforts to include electronic publishing. This article gives evidence of this move and discusses the factors that have been instrumental in promoting electronic publishing. The importance of information stucture and adherence to open standards are emphasized as critical components of digital document management systems. The development and use of Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) and Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) are discussed along with their strengths and weaknesses as tools of electronic publishing. An emerging alternative, Extensible Markup Language (XML), is described as having features that may reduce some of the impediments to producing and managing documents digitally

Seven Dimensions of Portability for Language Documentation and Description

The process of documenting and describing the world's languages is undergoing radical transformation with the rapid uptake of new digital technologies for capture, storage, annotation and dissemination. However, uncritical adoption of new tools and technologies is leading to resources that are difficult to reuse and which are less portable than the conventional printed resources they replace. We begin by reviewing current uses of software tools and digital technologies for language documentation and description. This sheds light on how digital language documentation and description are created and managed, leading to an analysis of seven portability problems under the following headings: content, format, discovery, access, citation, preservation and rights. After characterizing each problem we provide a series of value statements, and this provides the framework for a broad range of best practice recommendations.Comment: 8 page