The document discusses the Musica migrans project, which uses topic maps to create a portal about the migration of Eastern European musicians in the 19th century. It describes how the project began from discussions between historians about collecting biographical data on lesser-known musicians. Topic maps were identified as a good way to represent the relationships in the data. The document outlines how topic maps meet the needs of the project and discusses the technical implementation using an open source PHP-based topic maps engine. It provides an overview of the current status of the Musica migrans portal and ideas for future enhancements.

1. Musica migrans Topic Maps portal about the migration paths of Eastern European musicians in the 19th century TMUC 2008 Oslo, April 2008 Lutz Maicher, University of Leipzig [email_address]

2. How it all began … During a concert break we discussed with Prof. H. Loos, who is one of the leading German historians about the Eastern European music history that he dreams of a system which allows him to collect and analyse biographical data about little-known Eastern European musicians in the 19 th century. He was interested in making usable all the relationships in the data! This sounded like a case for Topic Maps, so we asked Mr. Loos to sketch his domain…

3. … and he started to sketch the domain! Person has names with a lot of different spellings secondary nationality of a person Date birthday of a person day of death of a person Place birthplace of a person place of death of a person Confession confessions of a person Profession main profession of a person secondary profession of a person Reference archive encyclopaedia further literature has educational development start and end of educational phase place of educational phase goal of educational phase has professional development start and end of a job place of a job profession in a job has concerts date of a concert place of a concert primary nationality of a person Nationality

11. Do we have the goal to be the first to adopt new technologies? 1 point total: 11/12 Yes.

12. Conclusion our result: 11/12 " If you got a sum of 3 or more points you might have a good reason for embarking on a Topic Map development project. " it seems that we might have a good reason to use Topic Maps (-;

14. Our approach for implementing Topic Maps portals … source: http://www.jjg.net/elements/ Jesse J. Garrett: The Elements of User Experience http://www.jjg.net/elements/pdf/elements_simpleplanes.pdf portal as software interface portal as hypertext system

62. What's next after Musica migrans? Musica migrans II, we hope … During a coffee break in a Musica migrans meeting we discussed with Prof. H. Loos, who is one of the leading German historians about the Eastern European music history, as you know, that he dreams of a system which allows him to collect and analyse data about the changeful history of Eastern European music institutions in the 19 th century. He was interested in making usable all the relationships in the data! And if all this data would be wired with Musica migrans! This sounded like a case for Topic Maps, so we asked Mr. Loos to sketch his domain…