James BaillieNov 22, 2022

Right, an actual work query: part of the project I'm setting up looks like it will need to include some sort of item cataloguing system.

It's going to be a meta-catalogue so we don't need updates on borrowing or anything, this is just a "where to find stuff". We will want to point at a wide range of resources & simplicity/stability are high priority. Thoughts on tech/software systems welcome, folk of #DigitalHumanities #Libraries #Librarian & #Archives Mastodon - grateful for thoughts & boosts!

Show threadCorey HalpinNov 22, 2022
@JubalBarca Mostly physical items rather than digital? How are they going to be cataloged (like, what subject vocabularies if any)? How are you going to want to search the catalog?
Show threadJames BaillieNov 22, 2022

@chalpin They'll all be in the general field of Caucasus history: I'm expecting both physical and digital items (for example there's someone who has a big sound archive who'd like to be included, and part of the project is getting a proper repository for digital papers/theses etc so there'll be PDFs to point to on that).

In my head search will need to be available by title/author/tag system. It's a sufficiently specific area that I'm not sure there's a good preexisting tag vocabulary available.

Show threadHenrik SchönemannNov 22, 2022

@JubalBarca @chalpin

What about using a simple graph database like https://graphdb.ontotext.com/ ?
Or even simpler, using python and the library 'networkx' or 'graph-tool'?

https://networkx.org/

https://graph-tool.skewed.de/

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Show threadJames Baillie
@lavaeolus @chalpin I'd ideally like a system that's a lot more out-of-the-box for this project if I can find one: while I could happily build and use one of those sorts of systems, it needs to be friendly to non-tech historian users and it needs to be maintainable by someone who isn't me, so scratch-building my own front end onto a regular graph database isn't the most desirable option.
Nov 22, 2022 at 12:02pmWeb
Show threadHenrik SchönemannNov 22, 2022

@JubalBarca @chalpin

I see...
I can't speak for any of these, but maybe you'll find a suitable out-of-the-box solution here:
https://www.predictiveanalyticstoday.com/top-graph-databases/

Alternatively, have you looked in to Zotero for managing your 'library' of physical and digital items?
You could just repurpose some of the existing categories:
e.g. using 'podcast' or 'radio broadcast' for the sound-items

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Show threadJames BaillieNov 22, 2022
@lavaeolus Thanks for the link - and yeah, hm... I hadn't considered Zotero and I think we probably want something more specific, but that has triggered some useful thoughts in my head about whether people in the project might already be running Zotero libraries that I could find a way to pull things out of, so that's maybe set my brain on some useful tracks too, thanks :)
Show threadHenrik SchönemannNov 22, 2022

@JubalBarca

You're very welcome!

And I'm very interested in your solutions etc. :)

Show threadStephan KurzNov 22, 2022

@JubalBarca @lavaeolus #Zotero has a few benefits:
- Ease of use in collaboration (user management, GUI clients for major OSes, sync etc) and
- data portability (their RDF is a mix of various namespaces, but it's relatively easy to convert it to any other #bibliodata format).
- Import translators from web resources/specific library/archive catalogues is doable with some #JavaScript

So whether you intend to (ab)use it, you might still consider using it as an input/throughput tool.