Leipzig eHumanities Seminars: Functional Categorisation for Historical Place Types

1. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
Functional Categorisation for
Historical Place Types
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Giovanni Colavizza
Leibniz-Institut für Europäische Geschichte (IEG), Mainz
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Colavizza@ieg-mainz.de
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2. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
Section 1: introduction and motivations
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3. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
The topic
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Controlled vocabulary: “a pre-selected list of terms used for categorisation.”
or “an organized arrangement of words and phrases used to index content and/
or to retrieve content through browsing or searching.” @Patricia Harpring
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Gazetteer: “a geographical dictionary or directory used in conjunction with a map
or atlas.” @Wikipedia
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Focus for this talk:
Controlled Vocabularies of concepts, not proper names.
Historical Place Types.
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4. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
Examples
Terms—label – concept relations—are often not defined.
Natural language is context and interpretation specific.
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@Dalia Varanka, A topographic feature
taxonomy for a US national topographic
mapping ontology, 2009.
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@Excerpt from
LinkedGeoData ontology.
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5. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
Motivations
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Quantitative analysis ↦ Classification
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Classification for quantitative analysis ↦ unambiguous, consistent, shared
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Controlled vocabularies for place types at the moment:
• grow out of necessity, are project specific
• have high degree of ambiguity
• lack of explicit (formal) definitions of terms
• are not designed for portability and reuse
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6. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
Basic definitions - I
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Taxonomy: “a semantic network of concepts (referred to, or labeled, via a
controlled vocabulary), linked by hierarchical relationships. A taxonomy is thus a
limited thesaurus.”
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Thesaurus: “a semantic network of concepts (referred to, or labeled, via a
controlled vocabulary), linked by equivalence, hierarchical and associative
relationships.”
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Ontology: “formal and explicit specification of a shared conceptualisation.”
@Studer, 1998 and Guarino, 2009
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7. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
Basic definitions - II
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Taxonomy: contains categories organised hierarchically. Used to classify.
E. g. “vehicles” ↦ “terrestrial vehicles” ↦ “car”.
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Thesaurus: contains concepts and labels for them, organised relationally. Used to
index and search. E. g. “terrestrial vehicles” ↦ “car”@en (alternatives:
“macchina”@it, “voiture”@fr, .. relates_to: “car park”, “highway”, ..)
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Ontology: contains classes, properties and logical rules. Eventually instances of
classes. Used to instance and reason.
E. g. “car” is_subclass_of “vehicle”. “has_horsepower” is a property between an
instance of class “car” and an positive integer. “Audi RS Q3” is_a “car”.
And so on..
@Thomas Francart
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8. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
Getty’s TGN - I
Getty’s Thesaurus of Geographic Names: “a database of places in context.”
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Target: professionals in the heritage sector. Always growing by design.
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Structure of a record:
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9. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
Getty’s TGN - II
Possible tensions from two directions:
• The mix of physical features and administrative entities in the hierarchies, since
“a geographic place is an administrative entity or a physical feature with a
name”.
• The account for both current and historical places, types and hierarchies.
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Good ideas:
• Instances of administrative entities. E.g. Ancient Egypt (former nation) is
predecessor of Egypt (modern nation).
• Instances have time spans.
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10. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
Getty’s TGN - III
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Place type: “a term that characterises a significant aspect of the place, including its
role, function, political anatomy, size, or physical characteristics.”
@TGNGuidelines, section 3.6.1.1
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Foundation for the hierarchy of every TGN record via preferred type.
Organised in flat general categories (Christian types, Physical features types, etc.).
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Most place types can be assigned to three macro-areas: physical features,
administrative divisions (geopolitics and internal state structure) and functions
(religious, economic, social, etc.).
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11. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
Getty’s TGN - IV
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Terminological issues.
Guideline: prefer the local terminology.
USA has state and county, Italy region and province.
Italian region is merged with region (generic administrative entity) and generic region
(another more generic entity).
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Lead to Ontological issues.
Place types are not themselves structured into a defined thesaurus, neither they
are formally distinguished in different domains, with specific rules to disambiguate
them.
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12. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
Section 2: proposal
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13. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
Desiderata
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Allow for comparison beyond single project (data integration)
Interoperability and portability
Scalability
More accurate retrieval
Reasoning…
Essentially: make vocabularies more machine-actionable
One possible solution: integrate a more strict knowledge model in the backend
of controlled vocabularies. Express it via thesauri of concepts built abiding to
ontologies.
Standards already there: ISO 25964 (data model), SKOS (ontology)
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14. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
An example - I
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List of monasteries in France:
Id
Name
Type
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1
Manlieu Abbey
tgn:monastery
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2
Argentan Abbey
tgn:monastery
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…
…
…
Can we improve on the simple tag “monastery”?
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15. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
An example - II
Thesaurus of concepts:
skos:Concept rdf:about=labelling.org/function-concept-10
skos:prefLabel xml:lang=enworship/skos:prefLabel/skos:Concept
skos:Concept rdf:about=labelling.org/function-concept-11
skos:prefLabel xml:lang=enestate administration/skos:prefLabel/
skos:Concept
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Controlled vocabulary of place types:
skos:Concept rdf:about=labelling.org/voc7/label-33
skos:prefLabel xml:lang=enmonastery/skos:prefLabel
skos:related rdf:resource=labelling.org/function-concept-10
skos:related rdf:resource=labelling.org/function-concept-11
/skos:Concept
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In the database:
Id
Name
Type
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Manlieu Abbey
voc7/label-33:monastery
2
Argentan Abbey
voc7/label-33:monastery
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…
…
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16. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
Idea - concept
An integrated approach:
1. develop back-end thesauri
2. vocabularies are built as needed, in natural language, associating tags with
formally defined concepts (avoid late integration)
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n-m mapping between vocabularies and ontologies.
Focus on what’s shared. Add details to the backend.
Pareto principle: 80% effects (tags we need) come from
20% causes (concepts).
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17. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
Historical place types - I
Quite problematic:
• Same nouns mean different things in space, time, culture
• Generic tags for specific meanings lead to ambiguity
• Layers of knowledge: historical agents, socio-political contexts, historians’
interpretations, etc.
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Example: “palazzo” in Medieval and Early Modern Venice.
For contemporaries:
Doge’s palace - Other nobles’ palaces had proper names, e.g. Ca’ Foscari means
House Foscari
For us:
A category of (historical) buildings — usually former nobles’ residences
OR a more generic category of somewhat big buildings
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18. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
Functional categorisation - I
Historical knowledge is mostly about events and processes, which drive the
production of evidence (sources)
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@Grossner, Representing Historical Knowledge in Geographic Information Systems, 2010.
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19. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
Functional categorisation - II
We model representations more than real objects, and we study humans:
purpose and function are the main concern
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From nouns to verbs:
• Most vocabularies of place types/features are already loosely classified by
functionality (economic activity, leisure facility, place of culture, etc.)
• There are less verbs than nouns (Wordnet synsets: ~82k nouns, ~14k
verbs)
• Verbs act as bridges between concepts in natural language, linked data
triples, etc…
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Not the only perspective (e.g. natural features, institutions), but a starting point
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20. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
Example: Barber-shops in Venice
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@Filippo De Vivo, Patrizi, informatori, barbieri. Politica e comunicazione a Venezia nella prima età moderna. Milan: Feltrinelli,
2012. In English: id., Information and communication in Venice: Rethinking Early Modern Politics. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2007.
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21. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
Historical place types - II
Problems:
1. Same nouns mean different things in space, time, culture
2. Generic tags for specific meanings lead to ambiguity
3. Layers of knowledge: historical agents, socio-political contexts, historians’
interpretations, etc.
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Expected outcomes:
1. We can add specifications of space, time, culture to concepts defining a term
2. Generic tags can be linked to specific concepts
3. The process of linking vocabulary terms to concepts helps the historian clarify
its reasoning and the layer of knowledge s/he is representing
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22. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
Historical place types - III
Solving the “palazzo” problem:
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23. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
What is a place - conceptual model I
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24. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
What is a place - conceptual model II
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25. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
Section 3: implementation
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26. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
How?
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Build thesauri of functions with a bottom-up approach, from sources
Build vocabularies when needed, reusing existing if possible
Develop a software to integrate such thesauri and the creation/re-use of
controlled vocabularies
• Raise and foster a community of interest and work together
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Let’s break down each part…
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27. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
Building thesauri of functions - I
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Good starting point: Getty’s AAT function facets:
http://www.getty.edu/vow/AATHierarchy?find=logic=ANDnote=subjectid=300054593
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Provide a general framework, i.e. functional domains and upper layers: economics,
government, social, education, etc.
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Small teams of historians and ontologists: start from sources and make explicit
part of the knowledge entailed in them.
A process of abstraction from detail and generalisation.
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Let’s see an example…
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28. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
Building thesauri of functions - II
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29. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
Building thesauri of functions - III
Giovanni Bartolomeo da
Gabiano, bookseller, publisher
and entrepreneur in Venice.
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Business letters from which
we can infer the activities
going on at his shop at Rialto.
“Data in mane de Messer Ioanne Bertolamie a la libraria da la Fontana in Venecia”
“Given into the hands of Mr Giovanni Bartolomeo, at the bookshop at the Fountain
[insigna] in Venice”
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30. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
Building thesauri of functions - IV
This letter mentions new editions being made —apparently the market was good for medical treatises:
Avicenna, Aliabate, etc.— and engravings ordered for them.
Various activities, today usually considered as separated:
• book-selling, accounting, warehousing, etc.
• publishing and sometimes printing
• patronage and other social activities
• …
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31. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
Building vocabularies - I
Similar to building thesauri of functions, but without supervision.
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Essential to:
• permit to use the same tags we’re currently finding in controlled vocabularies,
thus natural language and possibly no definitions
• allow for intuitive linkage with thesauri, and suggest vocabulary tags already
built and close in meaning
• design for continuous growing: term merge or split, sub-categories, …
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32. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
Building vocabularies - II
An example: Venetian fiscal declarations, 1514.
Rented “flats” (litt. small houses: ‘chaseta’) for residence: ‘flat’ (in vocabulary)
Possible interesting functions according to source: ‘renting’, ‘lodging’/‘dwelling’
under ‘economic functions’.
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33. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
Building vocabularies - III
@Luzzatto, Sergio,
Pedullà, Gabriele
(editors), Atlante della
letteratura italiana, vol.
1, Torino, Einaudi,
2010.
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34. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
The software: Labelling system - I
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Design requirements:
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Building thesauri of concepts in the back-end.
Building controlled vocabularies, for users.
Querying the system for such contents (for every agent, openly).
Administering and linking all these tasks and users into a single system.
Provide transparent management of the most used data formats.
Reuse open source solution whenever possible.
Be very intuitive and easy to use.
Waiting for possible grant on this…
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35. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
The software: Labelling system - II
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36. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
The software: Labelling system - III
http://www.vocabularyserver.com/
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37. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
The software: Labelling system - IV
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Implementation is key:
• we are struggling to have several people from different backgrounds work with
standards such as SKOS and RDF
• we need a common entry point, as transparent as possible
• we need to differentiate vocabulary building and thesauri of functions
concretely
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38. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
The community - I
Work on integration and alignment requires a community of interest and long
time—slow growth.
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Experts’ workshop on Controlled Vocabularies, Mainz 10-11/10/2013:
• gathered experts from different fields (history, IT, geography, …)
• discussed extensively about place types and the functional categorisation
• established a working group to start the process
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As of today:
• circa 30 experts
• wiki space and mailing list within DARIAH-DE
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39. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
The community - II
Space on DARIAH-DE wiki.
Already populated with references, vocabularies and first alignment projects, plus
the RDF (with SKOS) version of the Getty’s AAT function facets.
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Send me an e-mail to join us :)
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40. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
Summary
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Motivation: controlled vocabularies are ambiguous and lack definitions
Object: Historical place types
Proposal: use functional categorisation to overcome limitations
Implementation: community of interest, reuse of standards, ad-hoc software,
bottom-up source-based approach
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41. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
Future directions
Short term priority:
development of the Labelling system
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Long term:
• engage with more researchers and projects
• test the method in different settings
• steadily grow the vocabulary base
• integrate existing vocabularies in the system
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42. Leipzig eHumanities Seminars
11/12/2013
Giovanni Colavizza
Thanks!
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Giovanni Colavizza
Leibniz-Institut für Europäische Geschichte (IEG), Mainz
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Colavizza@ieg-mainz.de
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