Linked Data for Digital History

Connecting Data for Research

Victor de Boer

With input from Christophe Guéret, Serge ter Braake, Niels Ockeloen, Antske Fokkens, Dirk Roorda, Lora Aroyo, Johan Oomen,

Oana Inel, Jan Wielemaker, Jeroen Entjes

Victor de Boer

Web & Media Group, CS, Vrije Universiteit AmsterdamNetherlands Institute for Sound and Vision

Cultural HeritageDigital History

Linked Data for Development

Digital History

Sub-discipline of digital humanities

Part of the effort of historian is moved from the physical archives to digital ones

Cross-domain collaborationImg:www.doaks.org, www.dkrz.de

Tools and visualisations

http://armstrongdigitalhistory.org/, http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/courses/fall07/hius401-f/, http://digitalhistory.unl.edu/essays/thomasessay.php, http://www.philipvickersfithian.com/2013/05/gender-in-stacks-on-managing-small.html

“That is great. I would love that…

…but my research questions are slightly different.”

Img:Monty Python

Aging

Data Tool

C. Guéret based on http://redmonk.com/jgovernor/2007/04/05/why-applciations-are-like-fish-and-data-is-like0wine/

Even better

Do not bake the data into the tool and treat data as an end product.Build tools on top of the data.Make sure others can do so as well.

Fig: C. Guéret

Linked Data for Digital History

• Represent heterogeneous datasets with their own data models in common format: Resource Description Format (RDF)– Link what can be linked

• re-use and re-usability

• Linked Data is the (technically) best way to publish and share your (research) data

OBJECT EVENT

PLACE

TIME

PERSON

CONCEPT

PROVENANCE

Some examples

Dutch Ships and Sailors

The Problem:((Maritime) historical) data is not integrated

KB NEWSPAPERS

Dutch-Asiatic Shipping “VOC Opvarenden”

Jur Leinenga Matthias van Rossum

Elbing voyagesArchangel voyages

DIFFERENT but LINKED DATAMODELS BASED ON COMPETENCY QUESTIONS

dss:Recordgzmvoc:Telling

gzmvoc:telling-1046-De_Berkel

__bnode_1

gzmvoc:aziatischeBemanning

dss:Shipgzmvoc:Schip

gzmvoc: schip-1046-De_Berkel

dss:has_shipgzmvoc:schip

"1046"

“Schip”

“De Berkel”

rdfs:labeldss:scheepsnaam

gzmvoc:scheepsnaam

dss:ShipTypegzmvoc:Scheepstype

gzmvoc: type-Shipdss:has_shiptype

gzmvoc:has_shiptype

gzmvoc:scheepstype

“21”

“Moorse mattroosen”

dss:azRegistratieKop

gzmvoc:azAantalMatrozen

gzmvoc:telling

gzmvoc:heeft DAS heenreis

dss:Recorddas:Voyage

das:voyage-1918_61

ACCESS IT ATHTTP://DUTCHSHIPSANDSAILORS.NL/DATA

OR

HTTP://SEMANTICWEB.CS.VU.NL/DSS

SELECT * WHERE { ?record dss:hasOriginalScan ?scan. ?record dss:has_kb_link ?kblink. ?record mdb:schip ?schip. ?schip mdb:scheepstype ?shiptype. ?shiptype skos:exactMatch ?em. ?em skos:broader* aat:kustvaarders. }

Data analysis and visualisation

DIVE

MEDIA HISTORIANS AND RESEARCHERS Med

ia re

search

er La

r s Arv

e R

øs sla

nd

of th

e U

niv

ersi ty

of B

erg

en. (P

hoto

: An

dre

as R

. Gra

ven)

EXPLORATIVE SEARCH

Digital Hermeneutics: The combination of digital (Web) technology and theory of interpretation

DATA: OPENIMAGES.EU and DELPHER.NL

ENTITY EXTRACTION

CROWDTRUTH.ORG

ENTITY EXTRACTION

EVENTS CROWDSOURCING AND LINKING TO CONCEPTS THROUGH CROWDTRUTH.ORG

SEGMENTATION & KEYFRAMES

LINKING EVENTS AND CONCEPTS TO KEYFRAMES

DATA CONNECTED IN KNOWLEDGE GRAPH

DIVE:MEDIA OBJECT

SEM:EVENT

SEM:PLACE

SEM:TIME

SEM:ACTOR

SKOS:CONCEPT

OA:ANNOTATION

LINKS TO EUROPEANA LINKS TO DBPEDIA

“DIGITAL SUBMARINE” INTERFACE

DIVE.BEELDENGELUID.NL

BiographyNetStarting Point: Biography Portal of the Netherlands; www.biografischportaal.nl

125,000 short biographical descriptions with limited metadata from 23 Dutch biographical dictionaries (~76,000 individuals)

What kind of historical questions can be answered with these data with the help of computational methods

Biographynet.nl

Johan Rudolph Thorbecke werdin 1798 geboren op 14 januari in Zwolle en komt uit een half-Duitse…

Johan Rudolph Thorbecke werdin 1798 geboren op 14 januari in Zwolle en komt uit een half-Duitse…

Linked Data for BiograpyNet

Thorbecke

Biographical Description

ProvenanceMeta Data

NNBW

PersonMeta Data

“Thorbecke”

BiographyParts

Birth1798Event

Biographical Description

Enrichment NLP Tool

PersonMeta Data

EventBirth

Johan Rudolph Thorbecke werdin 1798 geboren op 14 januari in Zwolle en komt uit een half-Duitse…

Zwolle1798-01-14

Biographynet.nl

a

Provenance in BiographynetEnsure credibility of the demonstrator, to evaluate its performance and to improve the academic status of the tool

Information involved Sources, but also: NER input data, etc. Processes involved All steps in enrichment, aggregation…People involved Who was responsible for pipeline, tool,

Biographynet.nl*Daniel Garijo, Yolanda Gil; http://www.opmw.org/model/p-plan

Interface for historians

Biographynet.nl

Framework generic solutions with historians

1. Preprocess, Clean, Model, Link, Enrich data in a collaboration with domain experts

2. Access heterogeneous datasets in a convenient way to get an intuition of the character and anomalies of the (linked) data;

3. Perform arbitrary queries to retrieve results relevant to their research questions;

4. Verify the veracity of query results, by following provenance links to original material

5. Retrieve and analyze the data with tool of preference.

6. Republish and share results

Historical tool criticism… willingness from historians to invest the time to learn about computer processes (at least the basic principles)

Possibilities for education at universities to bridge the gap between computer science and humanities studies and make tool criticism an integral part of student’s curricula

“Why do we still teach history student to decipher 17th Century handwriting, but not SQL”

Thank you!

Victor de Boer

http://victordeboer.comv.de.boer@vu.nl

@victordeboer

Verrijkt Koninkrijk

30

National-Socialist; 29%

Social-Democrat; 21%Protestant; 13%

Liberal; 12%

Roman-Catholic; 12%Communist; 8%

Jewish; 5%

http://semanticweb.cs.vu.nl/verrijktkoninkrijk/

http://search.loedejongdigitaal.nl/

Results are links to paragraphs

re-usability

http://qhp.science.uva.nl/