A Linked Open Data Service and Portal for Pre-modern Manuscript Research

This paper presents a Linked Open Data publishing model for aggregating data from heterogeneous, distributed pre-modern manuscript databases into a global, harmonized data model and service. Our research hypothesis is that on top of the global data service based on ontologies and well-defined semantics, tools and applications can be created for solving novel research problems in manuscript studies using Digital Humanities methods. First results in implementing such a system in the international Mapping Manuscript Migrations project are described with lessons learned discussed in dealing with complex and imperfect historical data.