{"id":88,"date":"2013-01-14T18:22:25","date_gmt":"2013-01-14T18:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/?page_id=88"},"modified":"2022-06-21T16:54:54","modified_gmt":"2022-06-21T16:54:54","slug":"new-features","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/?page_id=88","title":{"rendered":"New Features"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

The addition of substantial quantities of new information<\/a> will not in and of itself establish EMLO<\/a> as the definitive aggregation point for epistolary metadata. Rather, if the resource is to fulfil its potential and meet the requirements of a new generation of users and potential contributors, we must transition simultaneously from a union catalogue to a tool of research and analysis by delivering services for the navigation, analysis, comparison, and visualization of the material assembled. Informed by two scholarly Pilot Projects<\/a>, and guided by a Digital Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow<\/a>, an intensive programme of software engineering will pursue these goals.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Under the Hood: Revising the Data Model<\/h1>\n

A first step, to be completed in 2013, will be to revisit our original data model, agreed back in 2009, and give it a thorough overhaul by creating new objects, new relationships, and new structured vocabularies. In particular, each item in the catalogue will no longer be treated as a static construct but as a dynamic, time-sensitive entity characterized by specific events at various points in its history. In technical terms, these revisions \u2014 consisting largely of the introduction of new relationships within the upgraded POSTGRESQL environment of EMLO-Edit \u2014 will incorporate elements of a common semantic model of key contextual entities (people, organizations, times, and places) currently emerging. Thus, while correspondence will remain front and centre, it will be contextualized by much more granular, relational handling of the following key constituents of the Republic of Letters:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"People\"<\/p>\n

People<\/h2>\n

Biography and prosopography will be a special focus: our object model for people will be expanded to include occupations and nationalities; relationships with others (further divided into familial relationships, personal relationships, and professional relationships); and relationships to places. Contributors of data to the catalogue will also feature much more prominently.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Places\"<\/p>\n

Places<\/h2>\n

Our approach to places will become more historicized, with spatial entities reconceived as a series of time-coded part-to-whole relationships (e.g. \u2018Banbury\u2019 would be identified as a smaller sub-set of \u2018Oxfordshire\u2019 within the national unit of \u2018England\u2019), and tied more closely to the movements of correspondents, as well as to the origins and destinations of their letters.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Books_&_Objects\"<\/p>\n

Books & Objects<\/h2>\n

Those publications and objects which were so often mentioned in letters \u2013 and travelled with them in the context of enclosures \u2013 will benefit from a much more granular treatment.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This approach will provide the standardization and segmentation necessary for efficient searching and analysis with the flexibility necessary to accommodate information of any level of simplicity or complexity, generality or detail. Once populated by the work of the two scholarly postdocs, the result will be an important new prosopography of the key correspondents of Hartlib<\/a> and Comenius<\/a>; an exciting new gazetteer of the historical place names found within the Hartlib material; and a granulated, chronological index of books and objects which \u2014 while in no way definitive at this stage \u2014 will provide crucial bibliographical and material context for the existing contents of EMLO.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Kerb Appeal: Browsing, Searching, Analysing, Visualizing<\/h1>\n

New possibilities for data capture and linking \u2018below the bonnet\u2019 in EMLO-Edit will allow for exciting new ways of expressing and manipulating catalogue content \u2013 focusing in the first instance on the correspondence networks of Hartlib<\/a> and Comenius<\/a> \u2013 in the search and discovery interface. These work packages will take place largely in 2014.<\/p>\n

Browsing & Searching<\/h2>\n

Our new data structures will be made discoverable and manageable within the existing front end (implemented in Python\/Pylons with search provided by Apache SOLR). This means new search forms, a restructuring of existing forms, updated filtering and faceting, updated browse lists, and \u2013 most excitingly \u2013 a reconfiguration of profile pages for letters, people, publications, and objects as dynamic, aggregated, configurable streams in which personal and intellectual events \u2013\u00a0letters sent and received, books and pamphlets written, rites of passage, professional associations, and so on \u2013\u00a0are seamlessly intertwined. For example, this Hartlibian person profile<\/a>\u00a0will be reconceived as something like the following, with underlined items indicating links to the relevant entity (which would also, in turn, be presented in streamed format):<\/p>\n

Schlezer, Johann Friedrich<\/h3>\n