Research Infrastructure for the Digital Edition of Historical Travelogues. Development of a Modular Platform for the Digital Edition, Complex Content Exploration, Analysis and Visualization of Historical Travelogues

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Guido Hausmann
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 453498639

So far, digital editions of historical travelogues have hardly exhausted the potential of e-Research technologies. This is particularly true when digital editions are used as a data basis for further analysis and visualization of historical travelogues. The basic prerequisite for this operation is a ‘semantic’ edition beyond paper simulation (see Ted Nelson), which enables further use of data based on research questions. The main objective of the project is therefore to build a modular and extensible electronic research infrastructure for transcription and critical edition of historical travelogues, including relevant research data, to contextualize the journeys with Semantic Web and Linked Data technology. This enables a new analysis, as well as visualization approaches to investigate historical travel. The unpublished report by Franz Xaver Bronner on his journey from Aarau (Switzerland) to Kazan’ on the Volga in 1810 and his return in 1817 serves as a case study for the project. In addition to the digital edition of the Bronner manuscript, the project will prepare semantic editions of a selection of already published and digitized travelogues. The added value for historical research will be demonstrated by exemplary analyses and visualizations based on these semantic travelogue editions. Relevant additional sources (e. g. post route maps and historical city maps) will be prepared and integrated as linked data into the database of the research infrastructure. The central result of the project is the development of novel ontology design patterns for travel reports and travel routes. Particularly important is the development of a new annotation scheme for interlinking marked text passages with corresponding database records. Furthermore, the project delivers semiotically founded visualization concepts for the analysis of historical travel. To achieve these goals, the project uses open source components for the electronic research infrastructure and established standards such as TEI or DTABf-M and DTABf for the markup of historical travelogues and CIDOC CRM with CRMgeo for ontology-based modeling of travel events and itineraries. Existing modeling and annotation tools, which support Semantic Web and Linked Data technology, will be adapted and advanced as components, as they can be straightforwardly included in the modular e-Research infrastructure. The prospects for analysis and visualization based on the semantically prepared travel reports will be explored in a final conference with participants from history, digital and computational history, geoinformatics and information science as well as information visualization.

• DFG Programme: Science Communication, Research Data, eResearch (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)
• International Connection: Estonia, Poland, Russia
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Dr. Karsten Brüggemann; Dr. Tatjana Kostina, from 11/2020 until 3/2022; Professorin Dr. Svetlana Malyserva, from 11/2020 until 3/2022; Professor Dr. Bogumil Szady