What is Finding the Celtic?

Finding the Celtic is an experiment to create an online digital humanities collaboratory for Celtic Studies funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. It will enable users to locate, access, and annotate resources for Celtic Studies, to share their work and research, and to enable digital publication.

There are three main aspects to the start-up phase of the Finding the Celtic ("FtC" for short) project, which will be last from May 2007 - May 2008:

• To configure and adapt the COLLEX digital collaboratory to handle data resources related to Celtic Studies (for those who are technically-minded, this is essentially defining the appropriate metadata schema and tailoring the code to handle it)
• To add information visualization extensions to COLLEX so that the data resources can be visualized in graphical representations
• To compile a sample database of digital resources from the multiple disciplines that intersect at Celtic Studies (e.g., history, archaeology, literature) so as to demonstrate the ability of the system to meet the diverse needs of the humanities
• To stimulate the creation of online resources for Celtic Studies.

The primary data resources and the exhibits that will be created from those components are meant to encourage lively discussion about the notion of "Celticity": can we identify aspects of culture (whether material or literary) that indicate Celtic identity? How do these elements compare and contrast to the culture of others near or removed in space and time?

Project Staff

• Project Director, Chief Architect, Code Sgallag: Michael Newton
• Consultants: Carole Crumley (Archaeology) and Dorothy Verkerk (Art History) of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
• iBiblio Support: Paul Jones and staff
• UVA ARP Lab Support: Bethany Nowviskie, Dana Wheeles, Erik Hatcher, Jamie Orchard-Hays and Nick Laiacona

Project Progress

• 2007.05.05: Began website
• 2007.05.14: Finished metadata schema design
• 2007.05.24: Successfully installed and ran COLLEX on FtC development computer
• 2007.06.12: Created sample RDF files, modifying ingestion system
• 2007.07.03: Sample RDF files successfully ingested into modified system.
• 2007.07.27: First version of modified COLLEX running with Finding the Celtic data.
• 2007.08.08: COLLEX search mode modified so that FtC-specific facets fully supported
• 2007.08.13: Created system help page
• 2007.08.30: First prototype of FtC:COLLEX deployed publicly on iBiblio
• 2007.10.11: Timeline display and graphic attribute mapping ("Settlings") integrated into COLLEX
• 2007.10.16: Version 1.2 (including Timeline and graphic attribute mapping) deployed on FtC website
• 2007.11.19: Version 1.3.1 (including GoogleMaps) deployed on FtC website
• 2007.12.11: Version 1.4 (including Graph feature)
• 2008.02.06: Version 2.0 (including Exhibit Builder (although not accessible from iBiblio server))
• 2008.04.22: Version 2.1 (fixed bugs; enhanced introductory web pages)

Known bugs and limitations

• While the exhibits features work on Mac- and Solaris-based servers, they are currently broken on Linux (which are used by iBiblio). Exhibits are disabled until a solution can be found.
• Some combination of parameters displayed on the horizontal bars on the Graph page cause "No Data" to result.