Modeling semantically Enriched Digital Edition of Accounts (MEDEA)

2015年5月至2016年4月，惠顿学院（马萨诸塞州）里根斯堡大学将召集经济历史学家、学术编辑和技术专家，讨论和测试账簿语义标记的新兴方法。项目负责人希望，拟议的活动将标志着长期合作的开始，这种合作将至少延续到未来五年。为启动双边项目提出的主要活动集中在账户语义丰富的数字版建模（MEDEA），包括三个阶段：-在里根斯堡大学于2015年初夏举行的一次会议上，项目负责人将介绍他们一直在探索的账户语义标记模型，以供受邀专家讨论、评论和建议。-在这次会议之后，与会者将制作可用作进一步测试和开发转录，标记和会计记录分析最佳实践的模型的示例。在2016年3月于惠顿学院（Wheaton College）举行的第二次会议上，校长们将展示此次测试的结果，并与聚集在一起的专家们就扩大实践社区的下一步措施进行磋商，这些实践社区将这些模型用于历史财务记录。项目负责人计划了这一系列活动，以便在过程的早期引入实际问题，从而避免引入仅从理论讨论可能产生的问题。将选择在活动第二阶段制作的实例，以展示一般账户类别中所包含的各种文件，并开始表明在这些来源中可找到的信息的广度和深度。大多数人类社会都有各种各样的财务记录。账簿长期以来一直被用作经济和社会历史的主要来源，因为它们允许学者在宏观和微观结构层面上探索经济行为的发展。来自账簿的信息可以帮助回答有关财富分配和穷人在地方，区域和全球社区中的作用等问题。账簿还提供最细粒度的数据，因为它们通常是关于历史上重要的个人和活动（如工匠及其作品）的历史信息的唯一来源。因此，MEDEA项目的更大的目标是促进广泛的标准的发展，以产生语义丰富的数字版本的帐户有可能改变人文学术在一个重要的领域。

Between May 2015 and April 2016, Wheaton College (Mass.) and the University of Regensburg will bring together economic historians, scholarly editors, and technical experts to discuss and test emerging methods for semantic markup of account books. The project directors hope that the proposed activities will mark the beginning of a long term collaboration that will extend for at least the next five years. The main activities proposed for initiating the bilateral project focused on Modeling semantically Enriched Digital Edition of Accounts (MEDEA) include three stages:- At a meeting to be held at the University of Regensburg in early summer 2015, the Project Directors will present the models of semantic markup of accounts that they have been exploring for discussion, critique, and suggestions from the invited experts.- After this meeting, participants will produce examples that may be used as models for further testing and development of best practices for transcription, markup, and analysis of accounting records.- At a second meeting, to be held at Wheaton College in March 2016, principals will present the results of this testing and consult with the assembled experts regarding next steps for expanding the communities of practice employing these models for historical financial records.Looking to the potential of developing broad standards for producing semantically enriched digital editions of accounts, the Project Directors have planned this series of activities to introduce pragmatic concerns early in the process so as to avoid introducing problems that might result from solely theoretical discussions. The examples to be produced during the second stage of activities will be chosen to demonstrate the wide range of documents that are included in the general category of accounts and to begin to suggest the breadth and depth of information to be found in such sources.A significant portion of the historical record for which cost-effective digitization models have yet to be developed, financial records of various sorts have been produced by most human communities. Account books have long been used as primary sources for economic and social history since they allow scholars to explore the development of economic behavior on both a macro- and microstructural level. Information derived from account books can help to answer questions about such matters as the distribution of wealth and the role of ¿the poor¿ in local, regional, and global communities. Account books also supply data at the most granular level, as they are often the only sources available for historical information about such historically significant individuals and activities as artisans and their work. Thus, the MEDEA project¿s larger goals of contributing to the development of broad standards for producing semantically enriched digital editions of accounts have the potential to transform humanities scholarship in a significant range of fields.