project overview
This project seeks to apply the principles of information visualization to the collection of the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL), an online digital collection of public domain texts in Christian theology and living spanning from the 3rd to 20th centuries. The aim of this project is to use information visualization to explore and uncover attributes of this corpus, including interesting relationships among texts or historical patterns.
about the CCEL
Started in 1993, the CCEL has over 600,000 unique visitors and 6,000,000 page views every month. The core of the library is 1000 theological texts from a wide-variety of influential individuals and commentators, selected due to their historical importance. These texts range from systematic commentaries, treatises on various topics, and inspirational texts. These texts are marked up in an XML-dialect specifically designed for theological texts (ThML), which includes marking attributes common among these text (e.g. scripture references).
Goals
- Gain a better understanding of the patterns in the CCEL collection
- Attempt to characterize the patterns in terms of broader historical trends
- Contribute to the CCEL a meaningful and unique way of exploring their library