In just one semester, this project has not been able to achieve all of the functionality that we had hoped for it. At this point, users can peruse several articles in Serbian and Croatian, see regional variants marked in the articles, and see tables built from the extraction of these variants based on the user's input.
While these are all useful tools, there are a number of ways that we would like to build on and expand the site. The steady incorporation of more data (more articles, that is) would allow us to incorporate statistical information about the relative frequency of variant words across publications or countries. We would like to be able to calculate the percentage of variant words and then compare such figures in a graphic display.
Another improvement we would like to make to the site would be to modify the display to allow for more interactivity. We would like the user to be able to click on a variant word in a table and have the article displayed alongside of it. Also, we are interested in seeing ways of displaying what the alternative word would be when a variant is used. So, when the user hovers over a Croatian lexical variant, it would also display information about the markedly Serbian or neutral counterpart. This would require significant amounts of new mark-up.
The site thus far is an accomplishment in its use of digital technologies to explore humanities research. If you have any comments or questions about the site, feel free to contact us.