All-WP-Meeting-5 – T3.4 112.06.2014

Task 3.4Overview and Aims

Steffen Hennicke (UBER)

All-WP-Meeting-5 – T3.4 212.06.2014

DOW on Task 3.4

• Research Questions(1) “What are the 'functional primitives' of the digital humanities?”(2) “What kinds of 'reasoning' do digital humanists want to see

enabled by the data and information available [and currently not available] in Europeana?”

(3) “Which types of operations do digital humanists expect to apply to Europeana data?”

• Participants• UBER, ONB, MPIWG, UIB

• Deliverable– Research Report on Scholarly Primitives in M36

All-WP-Meeting-5 – T3.4 312.06.2014

Scope of Task 3.4

• Principle Scope– The digital humanist as a user of digital research tools in a Linked Data

environment.

• Observation– too exclusive focus on content and infrastructure (e.g. Europeana or DARIAH)– too often the starting point is what is there (tools) taxonomies on DH →

methods

• Principle Aims– What does the humanist want to do with the digital tools?– shift attention to conceptual issues of humanities in the digital realm– initiate and encourage more reflection on humanities' methods in the digital

realm

All-WP-Meeting-5 – T3.4 412.06.2014

Scholarly Domain Model

• Principle Approach– start from a top-down and humanistic perspective– as a supplement for other approaches– John Unsworth (2000) [JU00] “Scholarly Primitives”

• Scholarly Domain Model– map of the generic humanistic research process

• primitives of scholarly work– pragmatic “living-model” as a framework for

discussions on the humanities and the digital

All-WP-Meeting-5 – T3.4 512.06.2014

Scholarly Domain Model

“→ Intermediary Research Report on DH Scholarly Primitives (MS3)”

All-WP-Meeting-5 – T3.4 612.06.2014

What has been done?

• Scholarly Domain Model (SDM)– provided input to initial specification of Pundit– last presented at DH2013– paper submitted to Literary and Linguistic Computing (LLC) (currently

under review)• Digital Humanists Advisory Board (DHAB) meetings

– input to SDM• SDM extended by “Scholarly Activities”

– specialize the Scholarly Primitives– principle “types of operations” (e.g. selection, citation etc.)– interviews with experts in collaboration with BWG

• Questionnaire on Primitives/Activities– Wittgenstein Incubator (Task 1.4)

All-WP-Meeting-5 – T3.4 712.06.2014

What are we working on this year?

(1) Reasoning• What do humanists make of the triples?• focus on Pundit / ASK

(2) Experiments with Pundit• bottom-up approach and practical perspective• input on reasoning• input on “types of operations”

(3) Revision of the SDM• RDF representation of the SDM

All-WP-Meeting-5 – T3.4 812.06.2014

What kinds of 'Reasoning'?

• Semantic Web reasoning or human(ist) reasoning?– automated-reasoning tools have limitations for

humanities scholars [AZ09]• require in-depth understanding of mathematical logics• humanities deal with “vague, ambiguous, or even

contradictory” information– in between “light-weight reasoning”?

• humanists' reasoning with triples• using ASK and other visual aids

All-WP-Meeting-5 – T3.4 912.06.2014

Reasoning and Pundit / ASK

• How do humanist reason with the triple data they created in Pundit?– How do they understand the triples?– How do they filter the triples?– Which kinds of conclusions do they draw?– What does trust, agreement or disagreement mean in this

context?• The application of the Timeline or of Edgemap

visualisation already is reasoning:– Which temporal sequences and semantic paths are relevant

for certain research questions?

All-WP-Meeting-5 – T3.4 1012.06.2014

Experiments with Pundit

• Use Case “Educational History”– Georg-Eckert-Institut (GEI)– two trained historians (research assistants)– collaboration on shared research topic– cooperation with “The World Of Children” (the whole project is devoted

to our principle topic)• Use Case “Digital Photos as Historical Sources”

– History Department of HUB– seminar with history students on historical critique of digital sources

• Use Case “Digital Editorial Science”– Berlin-Brandenburgisches Akademie der Wissenschaften (BBAW) and

Fachhochschule Potsdam (FHP)– three students working on devising and applying editorial guidelines

All-WP-Meeting-5 – T3.4 1112.06.2014

Experiments with Pundit

• Set-Up– Preparation Phase with Teachers / Participants

• How do relevant and genuine research questions translate into the context of Linked Data and Pundit?

• What does “comparing” or “selection” mean to certain user groups in the context of specific research tasks?

• Which classes and properties do we need to enable certain “types of operations”?

• Which inferences (reasoning) do students need to draw in order to answer the research questions?

– Introductory Workshop and Homework• Students work with Pundit (Bookmarklet) and ASK

– Closing Workshop• Which inferences do students draw from the data in Pundit / ASK?

All-WP-Meeting-5 – T3.4 1212.06.2014

Revision of the SDM

• Explicit RDF representation of the SDM– means to revise the SDM– explicit representation of “types of operations”

• comparing or selection as RDF templates– exercise in building bridges: making the model explicit and usable

for applications– starting point for future developments and implementation

• SDM as a tool for monitoring activities in Pundit

– Lives at: http://webprotege.stanford.edu/

• Finalizing “Scholarly Activities” (evaluation of interviews)• put SDM in context with similar current efforts

– e.g. DARIAH, Arts-Humanities, EuropeanaCloud

All-WP-Meeting-5 – T3.4 1312.06.2014

References

• [WM05] McCarty, W. (2005). Humanities computing. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

• [JU00] Unsworth, J. (2000). Scholarly Primitives: what methods do humanities researchers have in common, and how might our tools reflect this? Symposium on Humanities Computing formal methods experimental practice. Retrieved from http://people.brandeis.edu/~unsworth/Kings.5-00/primitives.html (03.02.2014)

• [AZ09] Zöllner-Weber, A. (2009). Ontologies and Logic Reasoning as Tools in Humanities? Digital Humanities Quarterly, 3(4).