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

MEI for All! or Lowering the Barrier to Music Encoding through Digital Pedagogy

Over approximately the last decade, the Music Encoding Initiative (MEI), has become a recognized international community-driven effort that has developed and maintains the MEI schema, standards, and shared documentation. The potential of machine-readable music data that can be reused, rendered, shared, or analyzed using a computer, is quite appealing, however the reality is that various barriers exist for people who may be interested in creating or using encoded music data for the first time. One approach to lowering barriers is through digital pedagogy, in which the focus is “specifically on the use of technology to break down learning barriers and enhance students’ learning experiences.” In addition to teaching MEI via online tutorials or workshops, students and scholars* should consider approaching the MEI through the lens of digital pedagogy or more specifically critical pedagogy, which emphasizes and overlaps with many of the tenets that make up the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. Critical pedagogy encourages questions around authority and power structures, for instance: why was MEI created and for whom, whose music is being encoded, who has access to the data, when/why should we use MEI, what type of infrastructure is necessary for MEI work, and so on. Encouraging and engaging in conversations with students and scholars about the affordances of MEI is equally valuable as is the act of creating encoded music data or full-on MEI projects

A panoramic view on metadata application profiles of the last decade

This paper describes a study developed with the goal to understand the panorama of the metadata Application Profiles (AP): (i) what AP have been developed so far; (ii) what type of institutions have developed these AP; (iii) what are the application domains of these AP; (iv) what are the Metadata Schemes (MS) used by these AP; (v) what application domains have been producing MS; (vi) what are the Syntax Encoding Schemes (SES) and the Vocabulary Encoding Schemes (VES) used by these AP; and finally (vii) if these AP have followed the Singapore Framework (SF). We found (i) 74 AP; (ii) the AP are mostly developed by the scientific community, (iii) the ‘Learning Objects’ domain is the most intensive producer; (iv) Dublin Core metadata vocabularies are the most used and are being used in all domains of application and IEEE LOM is the second most used but only inside the ‘Learning Objects’ application domain; (v) the most intensive producer of MS is the domain of ‘Libraries and Repositories’; (vi) 13 distinct SES and 90 distinct VES were used; (vi) five of the 74 AP found follow the SF.This work is sponsored by FEDER funds through the Competitivity Factors Operational Programme (COMPETE) and by National funds through Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) within the scope of the project: FCOMP01-0124-FFEDER-022674.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio