Exploring the Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne: Topic Maps and the Text Encoding Initiative

Abstract

Topic Maps, including their XML representation, XML Topic Maps (XTM), are a powerful and flexible metadata format that have the potential to transform digital resource interfaces and support new discovery mechanisms for humanities data sources, such as large collections of TEI-encoded literary texts. The TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) Guidelines provide a rich and expansive XML vocabulary for representing the structure and textual features of documents, including literary and scholarly texts. XML Topic Maps are a web-accessible, standards-based format that provides the combined functionality of traditional information resources such as indices, glossaries, and thesauri. As such, Topic Maps can serve as powerful mechanisms for navigating large collections of interconnected digital objects, including TEI-based collections. Together, TEI and XML Topic Maps provide an interoperable and complementary platform for describing a corpus of texts in ways that enhances the exploration, utilization and value of the digital collection of texts for users. The Swinburne Project (http://swinburneproject.indiana.edu/) serves as an ideal test bed for developing semantic web frameworks, supported by TEI and Topic Map encoding, that will enhance typical digital text collections. Swinburne was arguably the most important British poet in the closing decades of the Victorian period in literature. He was an important cultural figure whose impact was felt beyond the domains of literature and poetry, and he is an ideal central figure for the study of a wide range of nineteenth-century cultural and historical topics. To address the breadth and range of form and allusion in Swinburne's work, the Swinburne Project aims to unite digitized texts encoded in XML according to the Text Encoding Initiative Guidelines and semantic web technologies, such as Topic Maps, to construct a complex database of nineteenth-century British culture with Swinburne at its center. Semantic Web technologies, coupled with the explicit encoding of "topics" such as genre forms and references to people, biblical figures, mythological figures, Arthurian figures, as well as events, and works by other artists and poets, allow one to build elaborate indices, data visualizations, and metadata-driven navigation mechanisms for the collection. A White Collaborative Award received in March of 2008 has helped establish a more consistent, user-friendly topic map taxonomy and encoding workflow. Stop by and learn about Topic Maps, the Swinburne Project, and how the integration of the two can lead to dynamic exploration and deeper understanding of Swinburne's texts.