In loose relation to Dot's posting the other day...

[Forgive cross posting]

As part of a project for which we are seeking funding (http://www.visionarycross.org/), we are looking into using ontologies as the basis for building a generalisable platform for connecting representations of Anglo-Saxon cultural objects, tropes, texts, and the like (the specific details of this approach, which we've been developing over the last year, are still too nascent to be reflected in the website). The idea would be to see if there might not be a way of building a common, discipline-wide, set of minimal ontological distinctions that museums, literary and historical scholars, archaeologists, etc. could then use to place their particular objects of study in the larger context of the work of everybody else who has used the same ontology.

If any other groups are working on the use of ontologies to represent any aspect of the study of Anglo-Saxon England, I'd very much like to hear from you. I suspect at the moment people working on this are mostly likely to be in museums, libraries, or archaeology, but could be wrong. I'm considering putting together a grant application that would help fund the development of common standards and systems. Of course, with ISAS coming up, their might be some opportunities to meet in the next fortnight as well. Obviously at this stage, the idea is still fairly exploratory.

-Dan O'Donnell