nodegoat is a web-based research environment for the humanities. nodegoat allows scholars to build datasets based on their own data model and offers relational modes of analysis with spatial and chronological forms of contextualisation. By combining these elements within one environment, scholars are able to instantly process, analyse and visualise complex datasets relationally, diachronically and spatially.
Research projects use nodegoat to store, map, and analyse their data. Some projects have a focused scope, like the ‘Mapping Visions of Rome’ project of Susanna de Beer which maps an inner city literary landscape of Rome based on (Renaissance) Latin poetry. Other projects take a much broader scope, like Pelagios member ‘MANTO’ which builds a digital dataset of Greek myth.
nodegoat allows scholars to work on their data in a platform independent manner. Data can be exported to open formats like CSV or ODT. RESTful APIs can be configured to share data as JSON or JSON-LD. These features will help to integrate data that has been created in nodegoat projects with other projects in the Pelagios network.
nodegoat is used by many researchers to build datasets that did not exist before. We have added features to make connecting this newly created data to other resources as straightforward as possible. nodegoat can be configured to connect to any API or SPARQL endpoint to retrieve URIs. Once these connections are in place, data from these endpoints can be fetched and stored in nodegoat.
Creating a project specific gazetteer is a good use case for these Linked Data connectivity features. When a project starts to create their data collection in nodegoat, they can either ingest spatial data from resources like Pleiades, the iDAI Gazetteer, or GeoNames, or they enter new locations from their own sources and connect these to existing spatial resources. The API of the iDAI Gazetteer can be configured as a Linked Data Resource in nodegoat so this data can be queried from within the nodegoat interface. This nodegoat Guide describes how such a connection can be set up.
