Exploring Multi-Faceted Connections Between Heterogeneous Digital Scholarly Editions: A Data-First Design Study

Digital scholarly editions hold considerable potential for reuse and open data sharing. However, their heterogeneity in structure, tag usage, and granularity makes cross-edition exploration difficult. Even edition experts with extensive knowledge of individual editions face barriers in connecting them. To address this, we conduct a data-first design study to identify commonalities across editions. We study six heterogeneous TEI-XML editions and collaborate with edition experts to abstract three high-level Connection Types: Time, Geo, and Tag. We present BridgED, an approach that combines interfaces for connectivity exploration and measures for computing edition connectivity. Each Connection Type has a computational measure that quantifies pairwise connectivity, enabling consistent comparison and edition bridging. Interactive visualizations per Connection Type support detailed exploration, complemented by a fourth view that summarizes pairwise connections across all editions and Connection Types. Our approach facilitates multi-edition integration and informs future directions on edition interoperability.