Towards an Ontology for Historical Persons

John BradleyDepartment of Digital HumanitiesKing’s College Londonjohn.bradley@kcl.ac.uk

Tim Berners-Lee on Linked Data

All kinds of conceptual things, they have names now that start with HTTP.

I get important information back. I will get back some data in a standard format which is kind of useful data that somebody might like to know about that thing, about that event.

I get back that information it's not just got somebody's height and weight and when they were born, it's got relationships. And when it has relationships, whenever it expresses a relationship then the other thing that it's related to is given one of those names that starts with HTTP.

Tim Berners-Lee: Linked Data presentation at TED 2009

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Linked Data and History

If linked data is to connect historical data, it is likely to work best when centered on three kinds of entities: Sources Places People

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Prosopography as Linked Data

“A particular prosopography aims to amass and present clearly a quantity of information on all individuals in a given category” (PASE website)

Prosopography has traditionally been a linked data-like exercise

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SourcesPeople

From J.R. Martindale, The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, 3: A.D. 527-641. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1992.

Places

Digital Prosopographies on the WWW:as the main project and “on the side”

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Person Identity: URIs

URIs provide an excellent model for identifying persons globally

PBW “URI”: http://db.pbw.kcl.ac.uk/pbw2011/entity/person/143353

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Same person: multiple URIs

Linked Data/Semantic Web can even accommodate separate URIs for the same person:

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owl:sameAs

owl:sameAs

owl:sameAs

http://www.pone.ac.uk/record/person/12/http://db.poms.ac.uk/record/person/2046

http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/22966

Prosopography: more than “just” person identification

Historical persons survive for us through their appearance in sources, and historians identify them not only by their name, but also by what they did and by other ways that they are described.

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Prosopography and the linked Data Principles

1. Use URIs as names for things 2. Use HTTP URIs so that people can look up those

names. 3. When someone looks up a URI, provide useful

information, using the standards (RDF*, SPARQL)

4. Include links to other URIs. so that they can discover more things.

(Berners-Lee 2006: http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html

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From “Closed” to “Open” Prosopography

Closed: single research team, contained domain, controlled semantics, tight boundary

Open: collaboration between partners, fuzzy boundaries, multiple overlapping interests

Examples: POMS and PONE PASE to “PASEN” PBW to “Crusades”

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PASE->”PASEN”: the move from closed to open data

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PASE

Anglo-Saxons

Anglo-Normans

Normans 1

Anglo-Normans

Other people

Anglo-Normans

Other people

Normans 2

Normans 3

Anglo-Normans

Other people

The linking of people is only a part of the issue:The linking of data about the people each project holds also needs to be thought about

Boundaries between projects not necessarily so clear-cut

Existing data models for prosopography

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DDH: “factoid Model”

PBE/PBWPASEPOMSPONECharlemagne

DDH: Clergy DB Model

FOAF

OHP and other models

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DDH: “factoid Model”

DDH: Clergy DB Model

Ontology for Historical Persons

FOAF

Inference Layer

FOAF: Friend of a Friend

“FOAF is a project devoted to linking people and information using the Web. Regardless of whether information is in people's heads, in physical or digital documents, or in the form of factual data, it can be linked.”

“FOAF does not compete with socially-oriented Web sites; rather it provides an approach in which different sites can tell different parts of the larger story, and by which users can retain some control over their information in a non-proprietary format.”

14http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/

OntoLife: Personal knowledge management

“model life by describing a person’s Characteristics Relationships Experiences”

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Kargioti, Eleni (2009). OntoLife: An Ontology for Semantically Managing Personal Information

TEI: Names, Dates, People and Places

“... this module allows one further to represent a personal name, to represent the person being named, and to represent the canonical name being used. A similar range is provided for names of places and organizations. The main intended applications for this module are in biographical, historical, or geographical data systems such as gazetteers and biographical databases, where these are to be integrated with encoded texts.”

TEI, section 13 introduction(http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/ND.html)

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TEI: Personography: “Basic Principles”

Information about people, places, and organizations, of whatever type, essentially comprises a series of statements or assertions relating to: characteristics or traits which do not, by and large,

change over time characteristics or states which hold true only at a

specific time events or incidents which may lead to a change of state

or, less frequently, trait.

• TEI, section 13.3.1 (http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/ND.html)

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TEI: Personography textual markup: Marriage of William Morris

Persons identified by <person> tag

References to people in text tagged with <name>

An event tagged in the text with <event>

No roles for people in event specified

18TEI, section 13.3.2.2 (http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/ND.html)

Core structure for DDH’s Prosopographical databases

PersonPerson

AssertionAssertionAuthority ListsAuthority Lists

Assertion TypeAssertion Type

SourceSource

LocationLocation PossessionPossession

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Instance of

Typed by

Connected toConnected to

Appears in

Connected to

RoleRoleDateDate

Structuring Prosopography: the factoid

Pasin, Bradley (2011). Factoid-based Prosopography and Computer Ontologies: towards an integrated approach

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Source Assertion: A Document Interpretation Act

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Pasin, Bradley (2011). Factoid-based Prosopography and Computer Ontologies: towards an integrated approach

Martindale asserts that... “Greg. Tur HF” asserts that... Victorius 4 imprisoned Eucherius 4

“Two levels” of assertion

CIDOC-CRM: its place in an OHP?

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PlaceOntology

Place

SourceOntology

(FRBRoo?)

Source

Person

Assertion

Role

Event

Trait/State Relationship

Office/Title/Occup

Dates

Event Type

Group

Name

Possession

A Prosopography Project

AL: Offices, etc AL: Event types

OHC

Persons Assertions

A Source Repository

Sources A Place Repository:

e.g. Pleiades

Places

Building the OHP

Needs to be a collaborative ventureI have begun to talk up the ideaIf there is interest, a workshop to

explore it and develop ideas could be set up at King’s in London.

Comments??

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