Nodegoat

http://historicalnetworkresearch.org/?topic=nodegoat-faq

Entities

The following diagram illustrates the underlying principle of nodegoat and its associated terminology. The next points explain each term in more detail.

Types

Type covers the broadest definition of a set of objects within your data. Should your dataset include a variety of persons who all have different capacities, all of them will belong to the Type ‘Person’. The same approach can be applied to pieces of art such as paintings, sculptures or buildings: all could be part of the Type ‘Artifact’.

Shared Types

In order to provide access to structured geographical coordinates, we have included two Types that can be used by any nodegoat user. These Types consist of georeferenced information of the GeoNames database (http://geonames.org/).

Objects

are actors (both human and non-human, e.g. a painting, a person, a city). All intrinsic aspects of an actor are stored within the Object (stored in ‘Object Descriptions’ and ‘Sub-Objects’

Object Descriptions

are static fields that describe intrinsic aspects of an Object. In this context, static means a ‘non-changing’ aspect of an Object. Examples of static fields are the name of a person, the title of a book or the type of paint used for a painting

Sub-Objects painting

are dynamic components that describe intrinsic circumstances of an Object over space and time. In this context, dynamic means either a ‘changing’ aspect of an Object or an aspect of an Object that has specific geographical coordinates and/or temporal attributes. Sub-Objects always have geographical coordinates and temporal attributes and describe a ‘state’ of an Object.

Classifications

function in a similar fashion as Types. As Classifications are used to classify Objects by Categories, the contents of Classifications will be referred to as Categories instead of Objects. Classifications do not include Sub-Objects.

Conditions

can be assigned to Objects in Types based on the state of the Object. Conditions affect the visual representation of the Object within nodegoat.

Interoperability

• How can I export data?

Each data selection can be exported to CSV files. These files can be used to feed network analysis programmes like Gephi or Pajek.

• How can I import data?

The import functionality allows you to import XML, JSON or CSV (semi-colon separated, UTF-8 encoded) files. Based on these ‘Source Files’, you can create ‘Import Templates’ that you can run in varying speeds and precision.

Is nodegoat open source?

Currently, the core of nodegoat is not open source. The source code of nodegoat partner modules is released under a GNU General Public License.

Core publishing is planned for second half of 2016 to the nodegoat repository at github.com/nodegoat to extend development.

Demo account

login at https://nodegoat.net/login with demo_rembrandt demo

Opinions

Nodegoat похожа на Django

Модель данных nodegoat хорошо описывает артефакты понятием ‘Objects' и производными от него. А для событий подходит или понятие ‘Object Descriptions’ типа "Дата" или понятие ‘Sub-Objects' - Sub-Objects are dynamic components that describe intrinsic circumstances of an Object over space and time... By including a number of Sub-Objects within one Object, the ‘circumstance’ or ‘biography’ of an Object is reconstructed. Although the location and time of the birth of a person do not change, each of these aspects are described in one Sub-Object as they indicate a change in the state of the Object. (http://historicalnetworkresearch.org/?topic=nodegoat-faq). Показательно, что для события фиксируют одновременно и время, и место.

Сам программный продукт Nodegoat не сложный, и сделать такое же можно. Большие усилия Lab1100 вложила в визуальный компонент - тот, что отображает карту Земли и анимированные точки на нёй. Этот компонент сделать самому сложно. Кроме географической визуализации Lab1100 предлагает также "социальную" (большой граф), как показано, например, здесь - http://romanticnationalism.net/viewer.p/21/59/scenario/68/social

Guides

Once you've logged in, you will find yourself in a empty environment that you need to populate with [1] a project, [2] a data design and [3] your data.

The first thing you should do is create a new project (Management -> Projects -> Add Project) and enable the type 'city' and/or 'country' (both are available to everyone using nodegoat) when you want to use it in your project. You will also need to design a data structure (Design -> Design -> Add Type/Classification). Once you've created a new type (objects) or classification (lists), you have to enable it in the project where you want to use it (Management -> Projects -> edit Project). The data, obviously, can be entered under the heading 'Data'.

To see how a data design can be set up, you can consult two existing projects. If you login with the username 'demo' and password 'demo', you can explore the data and design of a correspondence networks project. If you login with username 'demo_rembrandt' and password 'demo', you'll be able to look at a project of the paintings of Rembrandt.

To get started, we recommend you to watch the nodegoat video tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLDRNiJrRUc&list=PLXc6y7l7xxxIwd64QppyAA0G2ECsNGJCx . The nodegoat FAQ can be found at http://historicalnetworkresearch.org/?topic=nodegoat-faq. The blog on the nodegoat website also contains information that will be relevant for you.