research

This page is a collection of Chris Sumption's research. It addresses challenges related to the interoperability and display of historical information.

Space-Time Data Visualization

This is a data visualization project that takes traditional illustration, graphic design, and user experience techniques and applies them to the display of space-time metadata sets. Through use of light, color and opacity, it explores the question of how do you represent space-time events in two dimensions. Currently the project has created the following experimental map visualization. View Project Documentation (PDF)

Tools: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JSON, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and Google Maps API.

Space-Time TEI Metadata

Space-time metadata provides an opportunity for digital humanities researchers to incorporate the contents of their work into historical visualizations like timelines and mappings. This section explains the rationale behind a TEI compliant metadata design and gives an example of how it could be applied.

Tools: Extensible Markup Language (XML), Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), and International Organization for Standardization (ISO)

Criteria

For decades TEI has managed and developed a set of encoding guidelines for the digital representation of humanities, social science, and linguistics texts. Using XML as its backbone, TEI is the generally accepted encoding model for the digital humanities. History focused, space-time metadata needs to be compatible with TEI. We used the following criteria to design our own custom TEI-XML element.

Easy Implementation

At times, TEI can be pretty intense, especially if you are adding multiple child elements and attributes. Ideally, our model should have only one element with the bare minimum of attributes

Human Readable

Wherever possible, no abbreviations, no shortcuts. This means long element and attribute names, but users with no metadata experience should be able to look at the markup and understand what it represents.

Compatible

Attributes of the element should: follow TEI's customization guidelines; record latitude, longitude and altitude; emphasize ranges over exact points; be ISO 6709 and ISO 8601 compliant; and indicate what locale the space time data is relative to, for instance "earth".

Open Source

Interoperability is the overriding principle. if we use something proprietary, there is a risk of restricted accessibility which then leads to decreased interoperability.

Application

Element:


								<historyEvent
 
								   relative="earth"
 
								   timeRange="
 
								      YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS/
 
								      YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS"
 
								   spaceDiagonal="
 
								      ±DD.DDDD±DDD.DDDD±AAA.AAA/
 
								      ±DD.DDDD±DDD.DDDD±AAA.AAA/"
 
								>
 
								   Text of the historical event.
 
								</historyEvent>

Example:


								<historyEvent relative="earth" timeRange="1943-01-12T00:00:00/1943-01-12T23:59:59" spaceDiagonal="-23.4094+150.4739+37+11.3/-23.3341+150.5592+37+11.3/">

								   <head>Jan 12, 1943 - Rockhampton</head>

								   <p>Went on 3 hour alert this afternoon and as rumor has it, we are to leave for New Guinea in two days. Busy Packing all personal and Co. gear.</p>

								</historyEvent>

Apitext is a student built prototype RESTful Application Programing Interface (API) for TEI-XML Transcriptions. Once uploaded to a TEI-XML folder on a website, it exposes a series of Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI). By using these identifier endpoints, a user can retrieve specific information from a TEI-XML file. Currently, the prototype only manages one TEI-XML file and only supports URI requests from the same domain as the API itself. Visit the Apitext website | View Apitext Project Documentation (PDF)

Tools: HTML, CSS, PHP, XML, JavaScript, and JSON.