R. Hoekstra
There are two different approaches to making historical source editions accessible: (1) full text searching and (2) using indexes and/or metadata such as persons, geographic names, and subjects. Both have their value, but they tend to complement each other. Full-text searching takes the literal textual content to make the material accessible. Indexes or meta-data are more abstract and usually subject-based – they make texts accessible by applying external information to it.
Ideally, the two approaches should be integrated to make a digital source-publication best accessible. This is complicated, as it requires combining information from various data-sources, both structured (for example data about historical persons) and un-structured (text documents), as if they were one. It also a question of trying to combine information within the texts and contextual information from an external data source.
The Institute for Dutch History (ING) publishes sources about all aspects and periods of Dutch history, increasingly in digital form through the Web. While publishing source publications, we are faced with the challenge to combine different types of information so that our users are enabled to find answers to the questions they have about the material. In this paper, I will review some of the strategies we have employed in this problem field. The possibilites and the problems we have come across, will be illustrated with examples from our own publications like a medieval chronicle of Holland and the Resolutions of the States General.
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