Project Details
Projekt
Development of an MEI and TEI based Model for Contextual Indexing of Music Documentation: Holdings of the Detmold Court Theatre (1825 - 1875)
Subject Area
Musicology
Term
from 2014 to 2021
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 257284058
Not only for libraries and archives but also for research institutes the warranty of permanent and effective access to very heterogeneous research data is a big challenge at the present time. Only by using international standards it will be possible to realize shared access in combination with varying options for analysing these data in a form which really meets the interest of all involved parties. With the formats of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) and the Music Encoding Initiative (MEI) we possess standards which are prepared for these tasks. Both provide detailed structures for the recording of data and metadata. By connecting these records with authority files we shall be able to open up new ways of approaching our cultural heritage. Especially the metadata section of MEI for the first time offers opportunities to register sheet music in a depth that allows scholarly debates without loosing compatability to the cataloging results of librarians. By close cooperation with all agents which are active in this field the project wants to develop a re-usable model for indexing performance material and other corresponding documents by using the holdings of the Detmold Court Theatre in the 19th Century (1825-1875) as an example, which are transmitted in an exceptionally comprehensive way. The user shall have access to the individual objects not only through the indexing data of the librarians but also by making the various contexts of these objects accessible. Constructing an interconnected network of data with these different types of documents will allow new forms of multi-faceted research in the field of court-theatre activities in the 19th century. In the second phase of the project applied here, the development of the MEI-based model (which started in 2014) shall be expanded, reviewed and specified by completing the basic recording of this collection as well as by continuing the work of a more thorough and exemplary indexing of some of these holdings. For testing and broadening the model a few selected materials from other libraries shall be included in the indexing process, too. The potentials of this new ways of cataloging which tries to connect the needs of librarians and scholars shall be illustrated by combining the indexing model with new forms of visualization in a way that will promote further interest in this model. Additionally, the acceptance of this model should be forwarded by providing tools for data entry and data conversion as well as by intensively teaching or discussing the model within the Digital Humanities. From the start, all these activities are done in cooperation with librarians and scholars in order to allow a re-use of the results (model and visualization) when similar holdings are concerned. Finally, the advantages of this approach for research in the field of the cultural institution 'court theatre' shall be demonstrated by combining it with extended forms of authority files or controlled vocabularies.
DFG Programme
Cataloguing and Digitisation (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)
