Classifying the Chimera

While the Digital Library (DL) concept is an extremely
vague one, its paradigm, the real implementation, is,
if possible, still more elusive.
Since the late 80s and during the 90s, the primary concern and
task in the textual digital resources field was really a basic (but
not simple) one: how can we put texts in computers? How can
we encode, manage and memorize them? Which stuff digital
texts are made of?
Other important problems were perceived (visualization, for
example) but they were temporarily put aside for practical
reasons. The Text/Data relationship is really a Castor and
Polydeuces’ one: is Text a particular kind of Data or Data a
particular kind of Text? The main choice, and long-term
winning, in the textual encoding issue was the use of the
powerful Standard Generalized MarkUp Language (SGML),
and – more specifically – the rules (or better guidelines)
established by the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), which could
actually be considered the de facto standard for encoding
humanistic texts in digital format.
The transition from SGML to the eXstensible MarkUp
Language (XML) was, more than an evolution, a sort of
Copernican revolution for two main aspects: the introduction
of the new stylesheet technology for displaying an XML file,
in particular the powerful Extensible Stylesheet Language
Transformation (XSLT), and the great diffusion and
development of open-source software able to manage XML
documents. This transition has of course also taken place in the
TEI: starting with the P4 version of the Guidelines, XML is
the technology now used. As a logic result different open-source
software tools for implementing a Digital Library with texts
encoded in TEI/XML are now available.
These tools are divided into two main categories. In the first
group there are software created in hard Information
Technology contexts (Database Management Systems, Native
XML Databases, Publishing Framework, etc.), and these
programs need to be adapted to the specific aims of a digital
library1. In the second, and this is a new trend, these tools are
being developed in academic contexts2, created from the
scratch, or using programs from the first group as the basic
core; in both cases the final function is the utilization with
digital cultural resources and overall TEI encoded texts.
Compared to the first group, the logical added value of these
tools is that often they provide some specific features for the
textual field3.
The choice is now much wider than it was just a few years ago,
but it could also cause some confusion in selecting the right
tool. As the experts of knowledge management well know, too
much information, if not well structured and organized, is
equivalent to no information at all, thus being completely
useless. Each software has its own peculiarities, which should
be evaluated and confronted against the characteristics of the
texts being encoded and the general needs and aims of the
project of which the digital library is part. What is the main
aim of a project? It’s the visualization one, with perhaps a
multiple output feature? It’s the research, with some form of
advanced textual analysis? It is possible to combine all these
aspect? And if somebody has already found a solution for our
problems how can we find it over the net?
Trying to find a solution for these problems, or better, trying
to share the same problems to have common solutions, during
the TEI Members Meeting 2003, there was the first reunion of
the TEI Presentation Tools Special Interest Group4. The
Presentation Tools SIG has two main initiatives: the creation
and update of a tool list and of a sample collection of texts for
testing.
The first version of the tool list has been presented during the
TEI Meeting in Baltimore, last October. This list is actually a
digital document encoded with the TEI/XML standard, and in
this way it’s currently published, using an XSLT stylesheet, in
HTML5. With a simple structure this list presents the various
software in an alphabetical order with a short description and
the links to the various implementations. From the descriptions
and the links it’s possible to have an idea of the distinctive
features of each tool, that for example the software XPhilologic
is very good for full-text search and document retrieval6 and
that Apache Cocoon could be implemented so to have an XML
framework for format scalable output of the same TEI
document7 And again, with Anastasia is possible to have an
electronic text/image edition of a medieval manuscript8 and
eXist is a powerful native XML database that could be used for
queries and researches.9
But this is not enough. Perhaps from a list you can obtain some
information, but what is really needed (and planned since the
beginning) it’s an higher level of classification, and this become
more necessary as the number of such software is increasing10.
It’s a software written in Java or in Perl? Which are requisites
for running it on a computer? It’s XML-aware? It allows XSLT
transformation? The texts are stored in the file system or in a
database? What are its peculiar features? It could be integrated
with other software in order to augment the possibilities? It can
be customized? It’s clear that a simple list cannot answer to all
these questions. Many discussions have been made about the kind of
classification to apply to the tool list and in my opinion it should
be made using practical rather than theoretical principles, with
a sort of empirical and pragmatic observation, including also
the links to the most possible numbers of the concrete
implementations of these tools, so to highlight the best practices
and the particular features of each digital library.
A good way of realizing this classification could be the use of
the standard ISO 1325011 or TopicMaps, and the respective
XML Topic Map (XTM) syntax12. A TopicMap is based on the
definition of a general topic, the particular and real occurrences
of that topic, and the associations between different topics, thus
in my opinion it’s the best way to obtain a complete
classification, which will include the various aspects, from the
most technical, concerning the programming languages used
or the technical specification needed, to the functionalities of
visualization, text research and analysis.13
So what is now a TEI document should be elaborated in a XTM
document, detecting, separating, organizing, linking and
classifying all the information that now are presented in a linear
structure.
Once created, the XTM file representing the TopicMap can be
used and navigated in several ways. Being an XML file, it is
possible to apply the same technologies used for the TEI texts,
but there are also available some dedicated software which can
exploit the great potentialities of this standard as, for example,
the Omnigator from Ontopia 14, or the TM4J 15, a java
open-source package expressly developed for creating,
manipulating and publishing topic maps.
The TopicMap technology has been presented for the first time
related to the TEI during the 2003 meeting, and it’s growing
in interest from this community, for its possibility of adding a
metadata semantic layer to the digital collections16. Moreover,
thanks to the possibilities of merging different XTM documents
each representing a different map, the Presentation Tools
TopicMap could be integrated with other map about other
subjects, the textual content for example17 or the documentation
of the local views of the DTDs18, thus creating the basis for
the definition of what could become a 'TEI Ontology'.
1. E.g., Apache Cocoon <http://cocoon.apache.org/> ,
Apache AxKit <http://axkit.org/> , eXist <http://e
xist.sourceforge.net/>
2. Anastasia <http://anastasia.sourceforge.net/> ,
teiPublisher <http://teipublisher.sourceforge.n
et/docs/index.php> , XPhilologic <http://barkov.
uchicago.edu/xphilo/>
3. See for example the TAPoRware set for textual analysis <http
://cheiron.mcmaster.ca/~taporware/> or the
Versioning Machine <http://mith2.umd.edu/product
s/ver-mach/> for the comparison of different versions and
editions of the same text.
4. <http://www.tei-c.org/Members/2003-Nancy/mm
17.html#tap-sig>
5. Available on line at <http://miro.acs.its.nyu.edu/
tei_cms/show.php> .
6. See for example the demo on the Brown Writer Women Collection
at <http://barkov.uchicago.edu/xphilo/search
.brownwwp.html> .
7. A good implementation of Cocoon with TEI can be found at <h
ttp://www.nzetc.org/> .
8. See the Caxtons’ Canterbury Tales at <http://www.cta.d
mu.ac.uk/Caxtons/> .
9. See the Digital Quaker Collection at <http://esr.earlha
m.edu/dqc/> .
10. See the presentations on this subject at ALLC/ACH 2004 <htt
p://www.hum.gu.se/allcach2004/AP/> . Among the
others: Kumar, Amit et al., teiPublisher a repository management
system for TEI documents <http://www.hum.gu.se/all
cach2004/AP/html/prop118.html> ; Matthew
Zimmerman, Using AMP technology (Apache, MySQL, PHP) for
XML publication <http://www.hum.gu.se/allcach20
04/AP/html/prop156.html> ; Stephen Ramsay, Geoffrey
Rockwell, Stéfan Sinclair, TAPoRware: Simple Portal Tools for
Text Analysis <http://www.hum.gu.se/allcach2004
/AP/html/prop136.html>
11. <http://www.isotopicmaps.org/rm4tm/>
12. <http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/>
13. For an introduction to TopicMap see Steve Pepper, The TAO of
Topic Maps, finding the way in the age of infoglut <http://w
ww.gca.org/papers/xmleurope2000/papers/s11-
01.html> .
14. <http://www.ontopia.net/omnigator/models/in
dex.jsp>
15. <http://tm4j.org/>
16. John Bradley, "A Model for Text Analysis Tools" <http://l
lc.oupjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/18/
2/185>
17. See John A. Walsh, "Topic Maps and TEI-Encoded Literary
Texts", <http://drh2004.ncl.ac.uk/abstract.php
?abstract=177>
18. Stuart Brown, "A Topic Map for the TEI" <http://www.te
i-c.org/Members/2003-Nancy/index.html#SB-ab
s>
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