An integrated view to medieval illuminated manuscripts
The purpose of this application is to provide the user with access to two collections of illuminated manuscripts from different libraries (accessible online at http://www.kb.nl/manuscripts and http://mandragore.bnf.fr) .The descriptions of these two collections follow different metadata schemes, and contain values from different controlled vocabularies for subject indexing. The user should however be able to search for items from the two collections using his preferred point of view, either using vocabulary from collection 1 or vocabulary from collection 2.
The main feature of the application is collection browsing, which uses hierarchical links in vocabularies: if a concept matching a query have subconcepts, the documents indexed against these subconcepts should be returned. The application also uses mapping links between the concepts from the two vocabularies. For example, if an equivalence link is found between a query concept from one vocabulary and another concept from the second one, documents indexed by this other concept shall also be included in the query results.
Additionally, the application enables search based on free text queries: documents can be retrieved based on free-text querying of the different fields used to describe the documents (creator, place, subject, etc.). For the subject indexing, if a text query matches the label of a controlled vocabulary concept, the documents indexed against this concept will be returned.
The two collections use respectively the Iconclass and Mandragore analysis vocabularies (Iconclass being described in EucIconclass)
Mandragore contains 16000 subjects. 15800 are descriptors, which are used to describe the illuminations and form a flat list. Additional structure is given by 200 abstract topic classes which form a hierarchy organizing the descriptors according to general domains but cannot be used to describe documents:
BIBLE ET APOCRYPHES … TECHNIQUES, SCIENCES APPLIQUEES ZOOLOGIE .zoologie (généralités) .mollusques .crustacés crabe [crustacé] crevette [crustacé]
A descriptor is specified by a French label (“cochon”, for pig), optional rejected forms (“porc”), an optional definition (“mamifère ongulé”, hoofed mammal) and a reference to one or more topic classes (“.mammifères”, mammals). A note can sometimes be found as an complementary definition.
To enable integrated browsing, elements from Mandragore and Iconclass vocabularies must be linked together using equivalence or specialization links, e.g.:
- “25F72 molluscs” (Iconclass) is equivalent to “mollusques” (Mandragore) - "25F711 insects" (Iconclass) is more specific than "autres invertébrés (vers,arachnides,insectes...)" (Mandragore) - “11U4 Mary and John the Baptist together with (e.g. kneeling before) the judging Christ, 'Deesis' ~ Last Judgement” (Iconclass) is equivalent to the combination of subjects “s.marie”, “s.jean.baptiste”, “christ” and “jugement.dernier” (Mandragore) - "25F(+441) herd, group of animals" (Iconclass) is equivalent to “troupeau” (Mandragore)