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The first of the Armadillo History demonstrators is now available.
The Armadillo History demonstrator is a search utility which allows a scholar to consult tagged information in multiple sources, either in isolation or at the same time. It is an attempt to evaluate the potential of semantic web technology to aid humanities researchers, and is based upon the work this project has carried out over its duration. An earlier version of this demonstrator was evaluated in the project report. This version is our first attempt at improving the demonstrator based upon the findings in that report.
Five of our eighteenth century sources are available in the demonstrator. These are the Sun and Royal Exchange fire insurance policies, the Prerogative Court of Canterbury wills, the Settlement Examinations for the parish of St Martin-In-the-Fields, the Westminster Historical Database and the Old Bailey Proceedings Online. Various pieces information have been extracted from each source, such as names and details of social contracts. These can be searched alone or in unison. Results are returned in a tabular format, with each result linking to a full citation.
Full context-sensitive help is available throughout the demonstrator via the various More Information links.
The demonstrator is available at: http://mango.shef.ac.uk/history/. However, at present a user name and password are required to access the demonstrator. This is so we can monitor usage and gather further feedback on the usefulness and usability of the demonstrator. To recieve a user name and password, please send an email with the subject line Armadillo Demonstrator to Jamie McLaughlin.