Archivkopie der Website http://www.humboldt-im-netz.de |
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Detlev Doherr
The Humboldt Digital Library: Exploring Innovative Structures
1. Introduction
A catalyst in the development of a Humboldt digital library has been the extraordinary adaptability and relevance of Humboldt’s contributions to science. Humboldt, in contrast to his predecessors, was a “scientific traveler”, whose precision in reporting his observations and findings make him unique and still relevant.
His unorthodox combination of text, precise data and images reflects his search for totality and global interconnectedness. Because modes of publication available to him could not accommodate the ambitious scope of these aims, it remains for computer-based information technology to do justice to Humboldtian science, represented in Humboldt’s twenty-nine volumes about the Americas with 30,000 pages and approximately 1500 images.
Using advanced information technologies we expect to provide multi-modal access to Humboldt’s legacy on an Internet based knowledge network, integrating webservices like digital libraries with text and images, user driven search profiling, and linkage to evidentual data archives.
Humboldt’s travel narratives suggest innovative features for our information system. Together with the rich content of his work and the exact measurements this reveals the obvious advantages of a Geographical Information System (GIS) to analyse the spatial connections between Humboldt’s travels and observations. For example, Humboldt’s observations on plant and animal distribution can be useful for detecting change in patterns during the last two hundred years.
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