GOALS
The main goal of this project is the realization of an efficient on-line tool which could allow researchers and academics to track the use of different toponyms inside different Literary works and to compare their meaning and translation. The dynamic and responsive Database will be organized into a web platform: researchers could look for a specific toponym, read the different identification hypothesis and the connected works to it, contribute to the Database development. This last point will constitute the major innovative and strength point of the project: a hierarchical users structure will be defined in order to discern students, researchers, achademics and experts. All of them could contirubte with new information (new toponyms) or rewieving the already present data. In the end the entrie database will become an OPEN RESEARCH ENVIRONMENT, a powerful tool developed for and at the same time built by researchers.
STRUCTURE
The CTD (Chinese Toponyms Database) has been realized in its first structure as a Microsoft Access 2016.
In its starting template CTD provides all the geographical sections of the selected five works, with about one thousand records in the toponyms chart. These sections are proved in both Chinese and English.
It allows users to find toponyms and sections in each of the five works, but also makes it easy to compare toponyms across works.
The table of toponyms contains place names in Chinese traditional characters, in the more modern pinyin, three hypotheses of identification (with references) and the explanation of the present geographic place they identify.
The table of sections contains the title of section in traditional characters, in pinyin, the title of the work to which it belongs, the chapter of which it is part, the Chinese text of the section and in some cases the English translation too.
There is also the table of the works. So far it contains only five works, providing the title in pinyin, in traditional characters, the author, short biography of the author, publishing date and a brief abstract.
CTD MOTIVATION
The CTD could be defined as a sort of comprehensive open platform where all the sections of different works are presented and could be selected in order to find the specific researched toponym. In this it will be possible to get the needed information without consulting the different works one by one, but all together in a single tool. This represent the strength of this innovative and original tool, together with the possibility to grow and to become larger due the push & pull information strategy (Push by experts and Pull by students and researchers).