Presentada en la Jornada de Web semántica en archivos, bibliotecas y museos, en la Fundación Ramón Areces, el 10 de abril de 2014.

1. Meeting on Semantic Web and Archives, Libraries and Museums
Fundación Ramón Areces, Madrid, Spain. 10th April 2014
Adrian Stevenson
Senior Technical Innovations Coordinator
Mimas, University of Manchester, UK
@adrianstevenson
“Il n’y a pas de hors-texte” –
Challenges for Archival Linked Data

2. “Il n’y a pas de hors-texte”
‘Of Grammatology’
Jacques Derrida, 1967

3. “There is nothing outside the text”

4. “There is nothing outside context”

5. http://archiveshub.ac.uk

6. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/locah/

7. Deconstruction / Context
• Archives Hub data in ‘Encoded Archival
Description’ EAD XML form
• Need to think about:
– knowing what we want to say about our ‘things’
– data modelling
– defining relationships
– selecting vocabularies
– deciding on identifiers – HTTP URIs
– creating RDF XML
– linking to external resources

8. Archival
Resource
Finding
Aid
EAD
Document
Biographical
History
Agent
FamilyPerson Place
Concept
Genre Function
Organisation
maintainedBy/
maintains
origination
associatedWith
accessProvidedBy/
providesAccessTo
topic/
page
hasPart/
partOf
hasPart/
partOf
encodedAs/
encodes
Repository
(Agent)
Book
Place
topic/
page
Language
Level
administeredBy/
administers
hasBiogHist/
isBiogHistFor
foaf:focus Is-a associatedWith
level
Is-a
language
Concept
Scheme
inScheme
Object
representedBy
Postcode
Unit
Extent
Creation
Birth Death
extent
participates in
Temporal
Entity
Temporal
Entity
at time
at time
product of
in
Archives Hub Model

9. http://data.archiveshub.ac.uk

11. Visualisation Prototype
Using Timemap –
– Googlemaps and
Simile
– http://code.google.com/p/time
map/
Early stages with this
Will give location and
‘extent’ of archive.
Will link through to
Archives Hub

12. wraggelabs.com/shed/presentations/anzsi

13. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/linkinglives/

14. Linking Lives
• Linking Lives is a project to create an end-user
interface based on Linked Data
• A biographical interface, providing information
about individuals that is taken from a variety
of sources
• Aim is to place archival descriptions within a
much broader context

15. Martha Beatrice Webb
Place of birth: Gloucester,
England
Place of death: Liphook,
Hampshire, England
Life dates: 1858-1943
Epithet: social reformer and
historian
Family name: Webb
Image
from: Beatrice Webb letters
Beatrice Webb (1858 - 1943). Fabian Socialist, social reformer, writer,
historian, diarist. Wife, collaborator and assistant of Sidney Webb,
later Lord Passfield. Together they contributed to the radical ideology
first of the Liberal Party and later of the Labour Party.
from: Beatrice Webb, A summer holiday in Scotland, 1884.
Beatrice Webb (1858-1943), nee Potter, social reformer and diarist.
Married to Sidney Webb, pioneers of social science. She was involved
in many spheres of political and social activity including the Labour
Party, Fabianism, social observation, investigations into poverty,
development of socialism, the foundation of the National Health
Service and post war welfare state, the London School of
Biographical Notes
Works
Our Partnership
My Apprenticeship
The case for the factory acts
Beatrice Webb’s diaries; edited by Margaret Cole
The Diary
Knows
http://dbpedia.org/page/George_Bernard_Shaw
http://dbpedia.org/page/Sidney_Webb,_1st_Bar
on_Passfield

18. Why?
• Telling stories
• Placing archives in a global information space
• External data forms part of the user interface
– moving away from the silo approach
• Dynamic links to other content
• Extensible
• An exemplar – shows what can be done

19. Some Challenges / Lessons Learnt
• Steep learning curve
• Difficult data, URI persistence
• Linking data not straightforward
• Keeping data up to date
• How sustainable are the data sources?
• Can you track the provenance of data
sources?
• Are data licensing issues covered?

20. Data Modelling
• Steep learning curve
–RDF terminology “confusing”
–Lack of archival examples
• Complexity
–Archival description is hierarchical and
multi-level
–RDF may be at odds with ISAD(G)

21. Hub data inconsistencies
• Winston Leonard Churchill
• Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill
• Churchill, Sir, Winston Leonard Spencer, 1874-
1965, knight, prime minister and historian
• Churchill, Winston Leonard, 1874-1965, prime
minister
• Churchill, Sir Winston, 1874-1965, knight,
statesman and historian

22. Understanding Vocabs & Ontologies

23. Linking Names
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/blog/2013/08/hub-viaf-namematching/

24. Linking Subjects

25. Thoughts on What Next?
• We still need more convincing use / business
cases
– Clear articulation of what researchers actually gain
by bringing diverse data together
• We still need more and better tools
– But this depends on use cases
• Cultural heritage not working together enough
– better collaboration on things like name URIs
• Coordinated consistent approach for vocabs

26. Adrian Stevenson
adrian.stevenson@manchester.ac.uk
@adrianstevenson
More on Linked Data at:
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/linkinglives/
http://data.archiveshub.ac.uk/
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/locah/

27. This presentation is available under creative
commons Non Commercial-Share Alike:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/