PeriodO is a gazetteer of scholarly definitions of historical, art-historical, and archaeological periods. It eases the task of linking among datasets that define periods differently. It also helps scholars and students see where period definitions overlap or diverge.
The PeriodO client is an application that runs in your browser. It can be used to browse and edit any dataset that conforms to the PeriodO data model. But most people are probably interested in looking at the canonical dataset curated by the PeriodO project.
When you first load the client, you are prompted to select a backend. A backend is simply a location from which the client will load data. The client supports three kinds of backends:
- A web backend loads data from a specified URL. Data loaded from a web backend can only be browsed, not edited.
- A file backend loads data from a local file. Data loaded from a file backend is also browse-only.
- An IndexedDB backend loads data from a local database running in your browser. Data in an IndexedDB backend can be edited as well as browsed. (Note that Safari does not yet have full support for IndexedDB.)
