Rome Wasn't Digitized in a Day - Council on Library and Information ...

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used to po<strong>in</strong>t between alternate descriptions of an <strong>in</strong>scription <strong>in</strong> different databases. Their use of an
ontology and a l<strong>in</strong>ked-data approach thus could be used to support the cross-l<strong>in</strong>k<strong>in</strong>g of exist<strong>in</strong>g
databases.
The challenges of l<strong>in</strong>k<strong>in</strong>g vary<strong>in</strong>g epigraphy databases with other types of digital classics resources
such as papyrological databases is also a grow<strong>in</strong>g challenge for which various solutions have been
explored by projects such as the recently completed LaQuAT (L<strong>in</strong>k<strong>in</strong>g and Query<strong>in</strong>g of Ancient
Texts). 366 LaQuAT was a collaboration between the Centre for e-Research, K<strong>in</strong>g’s College,
London, 367 and EPCC 368 at the University of Ed<strong>in</strong>burgh. Two recent articles by Bodard et al. (2009)
and Jackson et al. (2009) have described the goals of and technological challenges faced by this
project. The LaQuAT project used OGSA-DAI, 369 an open-source distributed data-management
software, to create a demonstrator that provided uniform access to different epigraphic and
papyrological resources. Basically the LaQuAT project sought to build a proof of concept that
explored the possibilities of “creat<strong>in</strong>g virtual data centres for the coord<strong>in</strong>ated shar<strong>in</strong>g of such
resources” and exam<strong>in</strong>ed how “distributed data resources can be mean<strong>in</strong>gfully federated and queried.”
From a prelim<strong>in</strong>ary analysis of digital classics resources, Jackson et al. reasoned that a data-<strong>in</strong>tegration
project would need to deal with the various complexities of annotated corpora, material <strong>in</strong> relational
databases, and large numbers of XML files. Such research is of grow<strong>in</strong>g importance because of the
large number of <strong>in</strong>dividual and isolated digital resources that have been created. “In the fields of
archaeology and classics alone,” Bodard et al. (2009) expla<strong>in</strong>ed, “there are numerous datasets, often
small and isolated, that would be of great utility if the <strong>in</strong>formation they conta<strong>in</strong>ed could be <strong>in</strong>tegrated.”
The researchers found that four major issues needed to be addressed <strong>in</strong> terms of potential <strong>in</strong>tegration
(1) the formats of resources were very diverse; (2) resources were often not very accessible (e.g.,
stored on an <strong>in</strong>dividual department’s or a scholar’s computers), and even data published on websites
were typically not available for reuse; (3) resources were available to be used only <strong>in</strong> isolation (e.g.,
s<strong>in</strong>gle <strong>in</strong>scription databases); and (4) resources were owned by different <strong>in</strong>dividuals and communities
with vary<strong>in</strong>g rights schemes. The LaQuAT project thus wanted to explore whether bridges could be
built between data silos <strong>in</strong> order to support federated search<strong>in</strong>g at the least and they thus brought
together experts <strong>in</strong> distributed data management and digital humanities.
The orig<strong>in</strong>al plan of LaQuAT was to l<strong>in</strong>k three projects: Project Volterra 370 (an Access database of
Roman legal texts and metadata); Heidelberger Gesamtverzeichnis der griechischen Papyrusurkunden
Ägyptens (HGV) 371 (a “database of papyrological metadata <strong>in</strong> relational and TEI-XML format” that
<strong>in</strong>cludes <strong>in</strong>formation on 55,000 papyri and is stored <strong>in</strong> FileMaker Pro); and the Inscriptions of
Aphrodisias (IAph). These collections span about 500 years of the Roman Empire and overlap <strong>in</strong> terms
of places and people. While all the data sets are freely available and both the IAph and HGV
collections have been published as EpiDoc XML that can be downloaded under a CC Attribution
License, it was the master databases of both the HGV and Volterra that were needed for this project
and they had to be specifically requested (Bodard et al. 2009). Despite their <strong>in</strong>itial desire to support
cross-database search<strong>in</strong>g of all three projects, they found that the challenges of <strong>in</strong>tegrat<strong>in</strong>g the
relational databases were so complicated that they focused on simply Volterra and HGV <strong>in</strong> this project.
One question they still wished to explore was whether <strong>in</strong>formation <strong>in</strong> HGV could be used to reduce
366 http://www.kcl.ac.uk/iss/cerch/projects/completed/laquat.html
367 http://www.kcl.ac.uk/iss/cerch
368 http://www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/
369 http://www.ogsadai.org.uk/
370 http://www.ucl.ac.uk/history2/volterra/
371 HGV is also federated as part of Trismegistos, http://aquila.papy.uni-heidelberg.de/gvzFM.html