Programmable Corpora: Introducing DraCor, an Infrastructure for the Research on European Drama

“Like a menu in a restaurant”: this is the comparison introduced by Chris Hoffman in his contribution “What Is an API?” to explain the meaning and purpose of an Application Programming Interface.

The DraCor project leverages on API technology. As illustrated by Frank Fischer et al. in their foundational article. As a result, many collections of literary drama texts developed in various European languages (from Russian to Greek, from Spanish to Italian) can metamorphose into Programmable Corpora. Through the well-documented DraCor API (https://dracor.org/doc/api), it is possible to access the documentation regarding the whole data ensemble.

The DraCor ecosystem encourages various approaches to the browsing and consultation of the data collected in the corpora, like those detailed in the Tools section: the Shiny DraCor app (https://shiny.dracor.org/), along with the SPARQL queries and the Easy Linavis interfaces (https://dracor.org/sparql and https://ezlinavis.dracor.org/ respectively).

The project, thus, aims at creating a suitable digital environment for the development of an innovative way to approach literary corpora, potentially open to collaborations and interactions with other initiatives thanks to its ontology and Linked Open data-based nature.  

References:

Fischer, Frank, et al. (2019). Programmable Corpora: Introducing DraCor, an infrastructure for the Research on European Drama. In Proceedings of DH2019: “Complexities”, Utrecht University, doi:10.5281/zenodo.4284002

Hoffmann, Chris. (2008). What is an API?. In How to Geek? https://www.howtogeek.com/343877/what-is-an-api/

InternetArchive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20210202135816/https://zenodo.org/record/4284002

Original date of publication: 10. 07. 2019