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Given at "Culturecloud, Co-reference, Archive workshop" 4 June, 2013, National Archives, Stockholm.
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Towards an Ontology for Historical Persons
John BradleyDepartment of Digital HumanitiesKing’s College [email protected]
Tim Berners-Lee on Linked Data
All kinds of conceptual things, they have names now that start with HTTP.
I get important information back. I will get back some data in a standard format which is kind of useful data that somebody might like to know about that thing, about that event.
I get back that information it's not just got somebody's height and weight and when they were born, it's got relationships. And when it has relationships, whenever it expresses a relationship then the other thing that it's related to is given one of those names that starts with HTTP.
Tim Berners-Lee: Linked Data presentation at TED 2009
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Linked Data and History
If linked data is to connect historical data, it is likely to work best when centered on three kinds of entities: Sources Places People
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Prosopography as Linked Data
“A particular prosopography aims to amass and present clearly a quantity of information on all individuals in a given category” (PASE website)
Prosopography has traditionally been a linked data-like exercise
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SourcesPeople
From J.R. Martindale, The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, 3: A.D. 527-641. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1992.
Places
Digital Prosopographies on the WWW:as the main project and “on the side”
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Person Identity: URIs
URIs provide an excellent model for identifying persons globally
PBW “URI”: http://db.pbw.kcl.ac.uk/pbw2011/entity/person/143353
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Same person: multiple URIs
Linked Data/Semantic Web can even accommodate separate URIs for the same person:
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owl:sameAs
owl:sameAs
owl:sameAs
http://www.pone.ac.uk/record/person/12/http://db.poms.ac.uk/record/person/2046
http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/22966
Prosopography: more than “just” person identification
Historical persons survive for us through their appearance in sources, and historians identify them not only by their name, but also by what they did and by other ways that they are described.
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Prosopography and the linked Data Principles
1. Use URIs as names for things 2. Use HTTP URIs so that people can look up those
names. 3. When someone looks up a URI, provide useful
information, using the standards (RDF*, SPARQL)
4. Include links to other URIs. so that they can discover more things.
(Berners-Lee 2006: http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html
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From “Closed” to “Open” Prosopography
Closed: single research team, contained domain, controlled semantics, tight boundary
Open: collaboration between partners, fuzzy boundaries, multiple overlapping interests
Examples: POMS and PONE PASE to “PASEN” PBW to “Crusades”
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PASE->”PASEN”: the move from closed to open data
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PASE
Anglo-Saxons
Anglo-Normans
Normans 1
Anglo-Normans
Other people
Anglo-Normans
Other people
Normans 2
Normans 3
Anglo-Normans
Other people
The linking of people is only a part of the issue:The linking of data about the people each project holds also needs to be thought about
Boundaries between projects not necessarily so clear-cut
Existing data models for prosopography
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DDH: “factoid Model”
PBE/PBWPASEPOMSPONECharlemagne
DDH: Clergy DB Model
FOAF
OHP and other models
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DDH: “factoid Model”
DDH: Clergy DB Model
Ontology for Historical Persons
FOAF
Inference Layer
FOAF: Friend of a Friend
“FOAF is a project devoted to linking people and information using the Web. Regardless of whether information is in people's heads, in physical or digital documents, or in the form of factual data, it can be linked.”
“FOAF does not compete with socially-oriented Web sites; rather it provides an approach in which different sites can tell different parts of the larger story, and by which users can retain some control over their information in a non-proprietary format.”
14http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/
OntoLife: Personal knowledge management
“model life by describing a person’s Characteristics Relationships Experiences”
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Kargioti, Eleni (2009). OntoLife: An Ontology for Semantically Managing Personal Information
TEI: Names, Dates, People and Places
“... this module allows one further to represent a personal name, to represent the person being named, and to represent the canonical name being used. A similar range is provided for names of places and organizations. The main intended applications for this module are in biographical, historical, or geographical data systems such as gazetteers and biographical databases, where these are to be integrated with encoded texts.”
TEI, section 13 introduction(http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/ND.html)
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TEI: Personography: “Basic Principles”
Information about people, places, and organizations, of whatever type, essentially comprises a series of statements or assertions relating to: characteristics or traits which do not, by and large,
change over time characteristics or states which hold true only at a
specific time events or incidents which may lead to a change of state
or, less frequently, trait.
• TEI, section 13.3.1 (http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/ND.html)
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TEI: Personography textual markup: Marriage of William Morris
Persons identified by <person> tag
References to people in text tagged with <name>
An event tagged in the text with <event>
No roles for people in event specified
18TEI, section 13.3.2.2 (http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/ND.html)
Core structure for DDH’s Prosopographical databases
PersonPerson
AssertionAssertionAuthority ListsAuthority Lists
Assertion TypeAssertion Type
SourceSource
LocationLocation PossessionPossession
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Instance of
Typed by
Connected toConnected to
Appears in
Connected to
RoleRoleDateDate
Structuring Prosopography: the factoid
Pasin, Bradley (2011). Factoid-based Prosopography and Computer Ontologies: towards an integrated approach
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Source Assertion: A Document Interpretation Act
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Pasin, Bradley (2011). Factoid-based Prosopography and Computer Ontologies: towards an integrated approach
Martindale asserts that... “Greg. Tur HF” asserts that... Victorius 4 imprisoned Eucherius 4
“Two levels” of assertion
CIDOC-CRM: its place in an OHP?
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PlaceOntology
Place
SourceOntology
(FRBRoo?)
Source
Person
Assertion
Role
Event
Trait/State Relationship
Office/Title/Occup
Dates
Event Type
Group
Name
Possession
A Prosopography Project
AL: Offices, etc AL: Event types
OHC
Persons Assertions
A Source Repository
Sources A Place Repository:
e.g. Pleiades
Places
Building the OHP
Needs to be a collaborative ventureI have begun to talk up the ideaIf there is interest, a workshop to
explore it and develop ideas could be set up at King’s in London.
Comments??
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