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project: Linking and Querying Ancient Texts (LaQuAT)
Subject Domains
- Archaeology
- Classics and Ancient History
- Librarianship, Information and Museum Studies
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Tools
- Java
- MySQL
- OGSA-DAI
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Content Types
- Dataset/structured data
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| Project start date: 2008-09 | Project end date: 2009-03 |
The LaQuAT (Linking and Querying Ancient Texts) project investigated technologies for providing integrated SQL-based views of diverse data resources related to classical archaeology, specifically containing epigraphic and papyrological material. These resources were quite heterogeneous in terms of standards and structure, comprising two relational databases with different schemas, and an XML-based corpus; they are hosted by different institutions in different countries, and are the outputs of divergent research communities. Nevertheless, the datasets overlapped geographically, chronologically and prosopographically. Such issues are typical of archaeological databases; to address them the project explored the applicability of 'grid computing', and in particular the OGSA-DAI software, for providing integrated views of such diversity.
| Methods used | Category |
|---|---|
| Audio-visual interaction (synchronous) | Communication and collaboration |
| Documentation | Strategy and project management |
| General website development | Data publishing and dissemination |
| Iterative design | Strategy and project management |
| Prototyping | Strategy and project management |
| Record linkages | Data analysis |
| Resource sharing | Communication and collaboration |
| Searching and querying | Data analysis |
| System quality assurance and code testing | Strategy and project management |
| Textual interaction (asynchronous) | Communication and collaboration |
| Use of existing digital data | Data capture |
LaQuAT used three existing digital data resources:
- Projet Volterra, a database of late Roman legal texts, housed at University College London (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/history2/volterra/index.htm).
- Heidelberg Gesamtverzeichnis der griechischen Papyrusurkunden Ägyptens (HGV), a database of metadata for circa 65000 papyri.
- Inscriptions of Aphrodisias, a corpus of mainly Greek inscriptions marked up in TEI XML (http://insaph.kcl.ac.uk/).
The project produced a demonstrator providing integrated views over the two database resources.
Note: The following entries - Content Types and Data formats - relate to the existing data resources used by the project.
The OGSA-DAI (www.ogsadai.org.uk/) software was used to provide integrated web views across the source databases.
- Blanke, Bodard, Hedges, ' Digital Classicist: Re-use of Open Source and Open Access Publications in Ancient Studies’, Proceedings of Digital Humanities 2009, Maryland, 2009.
- Blanke, Bodard, Hedges, Rajbhandari, Jackson, ‘Realising interoperability for digital classics resources’, SABRE, Text Mining Services, Leipzig, 2009.
- Blanke, Bodard, Dunn, Hedges, Jackson, Rajbhandari, ‘LaQuAT: Integrating and querying diverse digital resources in classical epigraphy’, Proceedings of Computer Applications in Archaeology 2009, Williamsburg, Virginia
- Jackson, Blanke, Bodard, Antonioletti, Hedges, Hume, Rajbhandari, ‘Building bridges between islands of data – an investigation into distributed data management in the humanities’, proceedings of the IEEE Conference on eScience 2009, Oxford.
| UK HE institutions involved: |
|---|
| King's College London |
| University of Edinburgh |
| Principal staff member: | Mark Hedge, Tobias Blanke |
|---|---|
| Other staff: | Computing officer(s) / Technical supporter(s), Postdoctoral researcher(s) / Research assistant(s) |
| External expertise: |
 |
| This project description was developed as part of the ICT Guides project. |
| Metadata on this arts-humanities.net record | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) of record | Mark Hedges |
| Title | Linking and Querying Ancient Texts (LaQuAT) |
| Record created | 2009-11-18 |
| Record updated | 2010-01-25 16:54 |
| URL of record | http://www.arts-humanities.net/node/2982 |
| Citation of record | Mark Hedges: Linking and Querying Ancient Texts (LaQuAT). <http://www.arts-humanities.net/node/2982> created: 2009-11-18, last updated 2010-01-25 16:54 |
