Tolkien Linked Open Data Project

Tolkien’s Life

The goal for this part of the project is to analyze and apply data structures to texts that document the “primary world” of J. R. R. Tolkien’s life (e.g., chronology and biography).

This project builds on and informs the work of the larger Digital Tolkien Project by using and expanding the existing tools, metadata (“markup”), resource description, and ontological standards, and scholarly best practices to analyze and describe data in texts (which can be re-conceptualized as archives or data-stores).

This work will take different kinds of information and transform them into structured data that permit computational analysis as well as linking to other data external to the texts as part of the broader Tolkien Linked Open Data Project.

Our vision is that someone could query and analyze the data generated from the texts and/or look up a particular passage or piece of information in these works to generate a list of other related entities from scholarly articles, monographs, letters, historical images, documentaries, blogs, virtual exhibits, etc., which discuss that aspect of Tolkien’s life or vice-versa.

This involves close reading of the texts and adding metadata and tags (“markup”) to identify persons, places, events, activities, and so on. This also involves collaborative teamwork to decide how to best apply metadata consistently.

To get involved, please contact Ken Hernden at ken.hernden@gmail.com or say hi on our Discord server.