Linked Data for Digital Humanities 2016

Publishing, Querying, and Linking on the Semantic Web

• Convener: Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller
• Hashtag: #LD4DH and #DHOxSS
• Computers: Students are not required to bring their own laptops for this workshop. Desktop computers will be provided by DHOxSSS

Abstract

The work of a digital humanities researcher is informed by the possibilities offered in digital resources: in their ever increasing number and their distribution and access through the Internet. In this context, the Semantic Web can be seen as a framework to enable radical publication, sharing, and linking of data for, and by, researchers.

This workshop introduces the concepts and technologies behind Linked Data and the Semantic Web and teaches attendees how they can publish their research so that it is available in these forms for reuse by other humanities scholars, and how to access and manipulate Linked Data resources provided by others. The Semantic Web tools and methods described over the week use distinct but interwoven models to represent services, data collections, workflows, and -- so to simplify the rapid development of integrated applications to explore specific findings -- the domain of an application. Topics covered will include: the RDF format; modelling your data and publishing to the web; Linked Data; querying RDF data using SPARQL; and choosing and designing vocabularies and ontologies.

The workshop comprises a series of lectures and hands-on tutorials. Lectures introduce theoretical concepts in the context of Semantic Web systems deployed in and around the humanities, many of which are introduced by their creators. Lectures are paired with practical sessions in which attendees are guided through their own exploration of the topics covered.

Timetable

Schedule Details

Monday

11:00 - 12:30

Scaling Digital Humanities on (and utilising) the Web: The Semantic Web and Why You Should Care
Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller and John Pybus

This session will introduce the participants to the key topics for the week, explaining how they fit into the over-all scheme of the week and how they relate to one another. It sets the scene for the motivations behind adopting the Linked Data publication paradigm, and addresses the practical aspects that will need to be considered by anyone wishing to use Linked Data in their own work.

14:00 - 16:00

Hands On RDF for Digital Humanities Researchers: an example in Early English literature Part 1
Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller and John Pybus

In this session we introduce ElEPHaT, a prototype project centring on Early English literature (1473 - 1700). The session includes some background information on the project, but predominantly consists of hands-on exploration of the project's RDF triples using simple existing interfaces and tools.

16:30 - 17:30

Sharing the wealth, Linking  Discipline: Linked Open Data for numismatics
Andrew Meadows

This talk will describe the creation and progress of nomisma.org, a namespace and ontology for numismatic concepts.  It will also introduce some of the exciting new tools that are being built within the world of numismatic Linked Open Data.
 

Tuesday

11:00 - 12:30

Ontologies
John Pybus and Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller

Ontologies are structural frameworks, which are used to map the "truth" of a given domain. These structures determine possible relationships between entities within the dataset, and are essential for reasoning and inference. In this session, participants will encounter numerous exmaples capturing a wide range of specialisms within the Humanities (CIDOC-CRM, Bibframe, to name but a few) and for other types of more generic (meta)data (DublinCore, PROV-O,etc).

14:00 - 16:00

Hands on: Building your own ontology
John Pybus and Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller

In this practical session participans will collaborate to create their own ontologies to capture and represent a given subject domain. The session will give participants the opportunity to engage in all the stages of ontology development, including design, implementation, reiteration, and documentation.

16:30 - 17:30

Linked Data for Musicology
Kevin Page

This session will provide an insight into several projects within the sphere of digital Musicology that utilise Linked Data.
 

Wednesday

11:00 - 12:30

Practical Linked Data for Digital Humanities Researchers: an example in Early English literature Part 2
Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller and John Pybus

In this session we revisit the ElEPHaT project from Monday, with a more specific look at the way information is structured, and how it can be queried and retrieved. The basics of writing SPARQL queries are covered. The discussion will also cover different possible options and alternatives for triplestores, and the ways in which to indentify those that fit a particular data and/or research requirement.

14:00 - 16:00

Hands on: Triplestores, and SPARQL
John Pybus and Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller

In this hands on session, partipants are taught how to discover information encoded as RDF using SPARQL (the query language of the semantic web).

16:30 - 17:30

Hands on: Triplestores, and SPARQL [Continued]
 

Thursday

11:00 - 12:30

Linked Data: an institutional approach
Donna Kurtz, Dominic Oldman, Joshua Seufert and Honjie Sun

In this talk, participants will find out how University of Oxford, in collaboration with the Mellon-funded ResearchSpace project, is linking and sharing academic research data with data from museums and libraries. There will be a particular focus on OXLOD (Oxford Linked Open Data), and demos of Digital Cultural Heritage India: American Institute of Indian Studies, Archaeological Survey of India, City Palace Museum Udaipur; and Digital Cultural Heritage China: Zhejiang University and CADAL (China Academic Digital Associative Library).

14:00 - 16:00

Hands on: Exploring and using the British Museum Endpoint, from mapping to representation and semantic query
Dominic Oldman

16:30 - 17:30

Hands on: Exploring and using the British Museum Endpoint, from mapping to representation and semantic query. [Continued]
 

Friday

11:00 - 12:30

Linked Open Geodata with Recogito
Leif Isaksen

This session is an introduction to Recogito - a tool developed by the Pelagios project for identifying geographic place references in historical documents and maps. It will cover both aspects of semantic place annotation - geotagging and georesolution - in texts and images, as well as the practical benefits of doing so, including search, analysis and mapping.

14:00 - 16:00

Hands on: Advanced Examples and Use Cases
Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller,  John Pybus, and Graham Klyne

In this hands on session, participants will be introduced to case study examples and use cases from the Linked Data world. They will have the opportunity to use existing open-source software to generate RDF triples.

16:30 - 17:30

Discussion group and Solutions surgery: How you might apply the semantic web to your work
John Pybus and Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller

This session is an opportunity for participants to get answers to project-specific and idiosyncratic problems. Discussion will cover the types of practical and pragmatic decisions that need to be made in the building and developing of projects using Linked Data, and participants will be asked to brain-storm ways in which these technologies will apply to their existing work.

This conversation can extend to the informal pub visit with other DHOxSS delegates and speakers (purely optional).