Medieval Music in Linked Open Data: A Case Study on Linking Medieval Motets. Issue 1 (March 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Rose-Steel, Tamsyn; Turnator, Ece
• Is Part Of: International journal of humanities and arts computing. Volume 10:Issue 1(2016)
• Page Start: 36
• Page End: 50
• Publication Date: 2016-03
• Subjects: Linked Open Data -- digital humanities -- medieval -- motet -- music -- French -- Montpellier Codex -- thirteenth century; Humanities -- Data processing -- Periodicals; Arts -- Data processing -- Periodicals; 001.30285
• DOI: 10.3366/ijhac.2016.0158
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1753-8548

Abstract

Abstract : In Fall 2013, the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, engaged five postdoctoral fellows placed in five different institutions to explore issues related to data curation for medieval studies. In May 2015, these fellows convened a two-day workshop on the sharing and publishing of Linked Open Data (LOD). Funded by a CLIR/Mellon microgrant, the workshop brought together librarians, technologists, and scholars to brainstorm on the challenges posed to medievalists in sharing data on digital platforms. 2 The workshop offered a forum in which to discuss the complexity of medieval data and the challenges of sharing and publishing it. It enabled participants to appreciate LOD's potential to express complicated data sets in our area of study and aid the navigation of those data sets, as well as understand how LOD can facilitate scholars to share and publish research outcomes more effectively. In this article, we take the lessons learned from the workshop and apply them to a set of complex data: 13th-century French motets, short pieces of music usually consisting of three lines and incorporating manifold connections and references. Following an outline of LOD, a detailed explanation of the motet and the manner of its composition will set the scene for elucidating the levels of complexity to be found in motet metadata, and hence why the LOD model can aid us in negotiating the data. We will then demonstrate an effective application of LOD by proposing a proof-of-concept system for organizing a select set of motets.