A Layered Digital Library for Cataloguing and Research: Practical Experiences with Medieval Manuscripts, from TEI to Linked Data

In this paper we report our experiences developing and applying a set of digital infrastructure elements which, in combination, realise a layered digital library (Page et al 2017) for the investigation of manuscript provenance.

We describe several related technical contributions: encoding of manuscript catalogue and local authority records as TEI; using Github for version control, issue tracking, and collaboration; automated production of catalogue user interfaces derived from the TEI; an XML processing workflow identifying, extracting, and processing TEI elements for reuse in research; mapping workflow output into a CIDOC-CRM RDF export; reconciliation of RDF entities with external authorities enabling the creation and use of Linked Data bridging multiple datasets.

We contextualise the co-evolution of these components and exemplify their use in studies of the provenance of medieval manuscripts. We reflect on the flexibility and extensibility provided by our layered approach, and the independent benefits for catalogers and scholars.