We will try to define in this presentation basic user needs for a generic working environment on historical data, discuss then some key technologies and architecture orientations for online open-source application MetaindeX, which intends to fulfill those user requirements. At last, we will illustrate its usage with a real corpus of few thousands French archives from "Archives Nationales", from 16th and 17th century.
This presentation intends to illustrate how MetaindeX opensource application could match a significant part of user needs, especially in the fields of history and humanities.
It first defines an overview of what user requirements could be for a working environment offering a ready-to-use, coding-free, quick and efficient access to advanced exploration, analytics and graphs capabilities over an historical data corpus for the researcher. It supposes that input data has already been collected, cleaned and reconciled, focusing on the exploration and analytics parts of researcher workflow.
In a second part, it then develops those needs through key technologies and architecture choices made for design and development of online open-source application MetaindeX [1].
At last, a sample use-case illustrates user experience and shows some analytics results from the use of MetaindeX and its ecosystem (Kibana and Gephi mainly), based on a set of French archives from 16th and 17th century.