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Catalogue of Digital Editions: A web application to browse, curate and analyse digital editions

Authors:
Greta Franzini at Eurac Research
Greta Franzini
Peter Andorfer at Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW)
Peter Andorfer
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Abstract

Since 2012 the Catalogue of Digital Editions has been cataloguing digital editions in an effort to survey and identify best practice in the field of digital scholarly editing. Initially published online as a comma separated value (.csv) file, in July 2016 the Catalogue was transformed into a web application to allow users to download, browse, query and filter the data around their research interests. Users are also encouraged to contribute new projects and to curate existing data to help the Catalogue grow in a participatory fashion. The goal of the Catalogue of Digital Editions is to shape a usable and useful platform to showcase community research as structured data, which can be reused and integrated into other initiatives (e.g. library catalogues or research projects). The Catalogue of Digital Editions is syndicated in the German Datenbank-Infosystem (DBIS) for use in 322 libraries (as of November 2017).
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WHY A CATALOGUE?
Since 2012 the Catalogue has been gathering digital editions and texts
in an attempt to survey and identify best practice in the field of
digital scholarly editing. Analogous initiatives exist but do not provide
the granular analysis of features necessary to better understand the
rationale and methodology behind the creation of a digital edition. This
Catalogue provides an accessible record of standards and building
technologies used.
WHAT DOES IT INCLUDE?
Digital (scholarly) editions of documentary heritage, digital text
collections and archives of literary works. No e-books or fiction.
WHAT DOES IT DO?
Projects are catalogued following numerous criteria (49, as of November
2017) giving users a wide choice of search filters. A built-in SPARQL
search interface can be used to query the Linked Open Data network
to which the Catalogue data is connected (FOAF, GeoNames, Data
Catalog, Dublin Core Metadata and Deutsche Nationalbibliothek).
Search results can be viewed as downloadable pie/bar/line-charts and
map views provide a geographical distribution of the projects (see
right).
You can download the entire Catalogue and you are also free to reuse
it as you wish as long as you credit the source. Currently available
download formats are CSV, RDF, N3, BIBTEX and JSON.
HOW IS IT BUILT?
The Catalogue is made-up of two interacting components, each stored
in its own GitHub repository: 1) the data, stored as CSV files, and 2) a
Django (Python) + MySQL web application to display the data in a
website. The two components are connected via a custom script that
regularly fetches the latest updates from the data repository and
delivers them to the web application. Charts and map visualisations are
generated on the fly using HighCharts and Leaflet. The web application
itself reuses open source code.
CAN I CONTRIBUTE DATA?
Of course! You can add a digital edition in one of two ways: if you are
familiar with Git and GitHub, you can fork the Catalogue data repository
and submit your project as a pull-request; alternatively, you can fill in a
Google Form.
WHAT’s In it for me?
The Catalogue is syndicated in the German Library Network (DBIS). As
a result, digital editions added to the Catalogue are automatically
accessible from hundreds of library stations in Germany (322
libraries as of November 2017).
Greta Franzini
UNDER THE ACADEMIC SUPERVISION OF
Melissa TERRAS & Simon Mahony
FINDINGS: OPENNESS
The Catalogue defines five degrees of openness, and digital editions
are not as open as we would like them to be.
4-6.12.2017
INNSBRUCK, AUSTRIA
Peter Andorfer
Ksenia Zaytseva
DIGITAL HUMANITIES AUSTRIA CONFERENCE
https://dig-ed-cat.acdh.oeaw.ac.at/
No information provided
Proprietary, (pay)wall
Proprietary, no (pay)wall
Open Access
Open Access & Open Source (part)
Open Access & Open Source (full)
Number of digital editions
0
70
140
29
50
130
9
32
1
5
FINDINGS: CREATION vs. USE
A 2017 survey investigated the expectations of users of digital editions
and compared 218 complete responses to 242 digital editions in the
Catalogue. The results illustrated below show that digital editions must
do better in terms of downloadable transcriptions, technical
documentation and openness. A journal article with a full comparison
of the results of the survey against the data of the Catalogue is currently
(November 2017) in peer-review.
Based on November 2017
data, digital editions are
mostly made in Europe
and America.
Transcription download
"Scholarly"
Images
Advanced search
Editorial statement
Technical documentation
Open Source/Access
% of survey participants (218 in total)
25%
50%
75%
100%
3%
1%
1%
3%
3%
2%
3%
1%
2%
9%
9%
4%
11%
7%
5%
16%
19%
19%
10%
22%
15%
10%
22%
24%
24%
34%
26%
28%
28%
55%
45%
45%
50%
38%
46%
57%
Very important moderately important
Important slightly important
not at all important No opinion
TRANSCRIPTION DOWNLOAD
“SCHOLARLY”
IMAGES
ADVANCED SEARCH
EDITORIAL STATEMENT
TECHNICAL DOCUMENTATION
Open Source/Access
% of digital editions (242 Analysed)
0%
25%
50%
75%
100%
17%
52%
2%
53%
36%
12%
68%
72%
17%
50%
6%
11%
30%
48%
47%
58%
88%
32%
YES ParTIALLY No
"Data First!?”
Christmas and Medal Icons from!www.flaticon.com!
FINDINGS: LOCATION
Catalogue
Digital
Editions
On Not Writing a Review about Mirador: Mirador, IIIF, and the Epistemological Gains of Distributed Digital Scholarly Resources
Article
Full-text available
  • Aug 2018
This piece mushroomed from a simple enough looking suggestion to write a review about Mirador, a viewer component for web based image resources. While playing around and testing Mirador however, a lot of questions started to emerge–questions that in a scholarly sense were more significant than just the functional requirements of textual scholars and researchers of medieval sources for an image viewer. These questions are forced upon us because of the way Mirador is built, and by the assumptions it thereby makes–or that its developers make–about its role and about the larger infrastructure for scholarly resources that it is supposed to be a part of. This again led to a number of epistemological issues in the realm of digital textual scholarship. And so, what was intended as a simple review resulted in a long read about Mirador, about its technological context, and about digital scholarly editions as distributed resources. The first part of my story gives a straightforward review-like overview of Mirador. I then delve into the reasons that I think exist for the architectural nature of the majority of current digital scholarly editions, which are still mostly monolithic data silos. This in turn leads to some epistemological questions about digital scholarly editions. Subsequently I return to Mirador to investigate whether its architectural assumptions provide an answer to these epistemological issues. To estimate whether the epistemological “promise” that Mirador’s architecture holds may be easily attained, I gauge what (technical) effort is associated with building a digital edition that actually utilizes Mirador. Integrating Mirador also implies adopting the emerging standard IIIF (international image interoperability framework); a discussion of this “standard-to-be” is therefore in order. Finally the article considers the prospects of aligning the IIIF and TEI “standards” to further the creation of distributed digital scholarly editions.
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