Posted by David Michelson on Tuesday, June 7, 2016 in Uncategorized.

Syriaca.org editor David Michelson will present “Syriaca.org: Bridging the digital gap between libraries, specialists, and the public” as part of the workshop: Linking the Big Ancient Mediterranean held at the University of Iowa: June 6-8, 2016 (#BAM2016).

An abstract of the paper is as follows and a full link to the presentation is posted below:

Presentation: BAM-Michelson-Syriaca

Abstract: Syriaca.org: The Syriac Reference Portal is a research project publishing online reference works and collaborative digital frameworks for the study of Syriac culture, history, and literature. Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic which was once the lingua franca of the medieval middle east. Syriac sources from the ancient world are plentiful, but there is no single national library, university, or research institute which has the resources or long-term mandate to maintain authority files or curate data derived from Syriac materials. Because this void is not likely to be remedied, Syriaca.org has created a linked open data infrastructure that enables disparate digital projects to bridge this institutional gap. At its core, Syriaca.org is a well defined system of URIs for use by three types of end users. For libraries and linked data aggregators, it provides authority files, disambiguation, and federated search. For specialists and those creating digital projects, it makes available open source software customized for representing Syriac-related materials in TEI and RDF and the opportunity for data federation with other projects. Finally, for a general audience (including members of the Syriac heritage communities, students, and researchers in other fields), Syriaca.org publishes core reference works which also serve as an entry point to exploring the linked data it has fostered.