DEPCHA - Digital Edition Publishing Cooperative for Historical Accounts

The DEPCHA (Digital Edition Publishing Cooperative for Historical Accounts) project uses Semantic Web technologies to present diverse financial data from historical documents on a web-based platform. The project's goal goes beyond data sharing and long-term preservation, focusing on the development of a web interface with exploration, visualisation and self-organisation features. DEPCHA serves as a discovery and publication hub for datasets and digital editions of historical financial documents, adhering to the FAIR data principles. The initiative relies on GAMS, a Humanities Asset Management System providing research data infrastructure, maintained by the Centre for Information Modelling at the University of Graz. DEPCHA combines digital editions functionalities with Semantic Web and Linked Open Data concepts to create a knowledge graph detailing the different contexts and research foci of the source. An interactive user interface is designed to explore and analyse entities and data from historical sources. A faceted analytical display, also known as a dashboard, uses information visualisation to present different perspectives and use cases.

Workflows

Partners use different systems, some of which are data-centric and use personal database systems, spreadsheets or similar environments. In these cases, DEPCHA provides a method for converting data into RDF format using a CSV template and a Python script using RDFlib. Python's adaptability benefits the transformation process, as historical information structures and representations vary from project to project depending on research needs. Metadata for the dataset can also be included using a simple JSON template. This process is collectively referred to as the "dataset" workflow.

For other partners, such as editors, the aim is to develop a digital edition that requires all information to be expressed in XML/TEI format. This is particularly valuable for historians seeking contextual information, as the digital edition allows for the addition of additional layers of information beyond digital facsimiles, transcriptions or critical editions. The semantic layer of the Bookkeeping Ontology is expressed through additional annotations. This is referred to as the "edition" workflow. A comprehensive tutorial for different annotation scenarios in XML/TEI has been developed and can be accessed via the following link: https://gams.uni-graz.at/o:depcha.tutorial#xml_tei.

Whatever the scenario, there are different requirements from datasets to digital editions, but they all share a common feature, which is the structure of transactions expressed using the Bookkeeping Ontology and formalised as RDF. While datasets consist of RDF data only, the digital edition includes both XML/TEI and RDF data.

Partners
  • Kathryn Tomasek, Wheaton College
  • Jennifer Stertzer, Center for Digital Editing
  • Erica Cavanaugh, Center for Digital Editing
  • Ben Brumfield, Brumfield Labs
  • Sara Brumfield, Brumfield Labs
  • Anna Agbe-Davies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • Jodi Eastberg, Alverno College
  • Naoki Kokaze, Chiba University
  • Hadewijch Masure, Stadsarchief Leuven
  • Michał Schmidt, Warsaw
  • Michał Slomski, Warsaw
  • Anton Büchel
  • Laura Morreale
  • Nathan Daniels
  • Gabriel Viehhauser, Universität Stuttgart
Publications
Talks