Towards Multidisciplinary Annotation of Fluid Historical Corpora Using Linked Data

This discussion paper introduces a reusable digital research infrastructure, currently under construction at Ghent University, for the multidisciplinary annotation of historical texts in all their material manifestations. The framework interlinks IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework) manifests, semi-automatically produced transcriptions, and layered historical, linguistic, literary, and material annotations within a Linked Data environment. The infrastructure enables seamless collaboration across disciplines and supports the interoperable reuse of data that are typically siloed or mutually incommensurable. We illustrate the concept with a prototype corpus; however, the model is applicable to any historical text corpus regardless of origin. The result is an environment in which machine-readable annotations and metadata can be combined to explore the richness of variation in the material record across time, space, and cultural as well as linguistic contexts, thereby unlocking richer, more transparent analyses and maximising the reuse potential of existing and newly produced annotations.