Linked Biondo - Modelling Geographical Features in Renaissance Text and Maps

Bibliotheca Hertziana's project "Historical spaces in texts and maps" aims at a cognitive-semantic analysis of Flavio Biondo's "ItaliaIllustrata" linking with contemporary maps. At focus are relationsbetween historical maps and texts aiming to explore the historicalunderstanding of space. We combine cognitive-semantic parameters such as toponyms, landmarks, spatial frames of reference, geometricrelations, gestalt principles and different perspectives with computational and cognitive linguistic analysis, using different tools for annotating place names including geographic verification in textand maps and for cognitive-linguistic annotation of spatial relations.

To achieve a generic semantic level for all annotations, we pursue thetransition to an ontology-based representation. Using the CIDOC CRMopens up a wide spectrum of interoperability and linking. This allowsa semantic interpretation of annotations such that we generateinstantiated CRM descriptions in RDF/OWL triple format, ready forpublication as Linked Open Data.