Presentation delivered at the Linked Ancient World Data Institute, Drew University, 30 May 2013.
Copyright 2013 New York University.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en_US
Funding for the preparation and presentation of this presentation and the workshop at which it was presented was provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this presentation do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
1. Copyright 2013 New York University.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en_US
Funding for the preparation and presentation of this presentation and the workshop at which it was presented was
provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations
expressed in this presentation do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Linked Data at ISAW: How and Why
Tom Elliott
Associate Director for Digital Programs and Senior Research Scholar
http://www.paregorios.org
2. Theodor Mommsen
Photo of unknown date, but prior to Mommsen’s death in 1903. Public domain. Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:T-mommsen-2.jpg
4. • There is a person named “Daniel T. Potts”.
– There is a person. That person is named “Daniel T. Potts”.
Describing an ISAW faculty member
5. • RDF = Resource Description Framework
http://www.w3.org/RDF/
“a general-purpose language for representing information in the
Web”
• triple: the most basic RDF expression, consisting of a
subject, predicate (verb), and object (property). Each triple
represents a statement of a relationship between the things
denoted by the nodes that it links. A triple can be represented as a
node-arc-node link diagram.”
• A set of triples is called an RDF graph, a term derived from
mathematics and computer science denoting a set of objects (or
data structures) in which pairs of objects are connected by links.
Terms: “RDF Triples”
Subject Object
Predicate
6. • Turtle = Terse RDF Triple Language
http://www.w3.org/TR/turtle/
“a textual syntax for RDF called Turtle that allows RDF graphs to be
completely written in a compact and natural text form, with
abbreviations for common usage patterns and datatypes.”
The media type of Turtle is text/turtle. The content encoding of
Turtle content is always UTF-8.
• subject predicate object .
Writing RDF Triples in Turtle
7. There is a person. That person is named “Daniel T. Potts”.
There is a person.
• subject predicate object .
• subject:[X] verb:[is] predicate:[a person] .
What we need:
– Subject, Predicate (verb), Object (property)
– Uniform Resource Identifiers corresponding to each
– Key question: mint or reuse
Describing an ISAW faculty member in Turtle
8. • Modern authors (i.e., many scholars, like George):
– Virtual International Authority File (VIAF)
http://viaf.org/
• Basic characteristics and activities of persons, and relationships
between them and things on the web:
– FOAF Vocabulary (“Friend of a Friend”)
http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/
Finding URIs to re-use
9. There is a person. That person is named “Daniel T. Potts”.
There is a person.
• subject predicate object .
• subject:[X] verb:[is] predicate:[a person] .
<http://viaf.org/viaf/17238976> a
<http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/#term_Person> .
Describing an ISAW faculty member in Turtle
10. There is a person. That person is named “Daniel T. Potts”.
There is a person.
• subject predicate object .
• subject:[X] verb:[is] predicate:[a person] .
<http://viaf.org/viaf/17238976> a
<http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/#term_Person> .
--------------------
@prefix viaf: <http://viaf.org/viaf/> .
@prefix foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/#term_> .
viaf:17238976 a foaf:Person .
Describing an ISAW faculty member in Turtle
11. There is a person. That person is named “Daniel T. Potts”.
@prefix viaf: <http://viaf.org/viaf/> .
@prefix foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/#term_> .
viaf:17238976 a foaf:Person .
viaf:17238976 foaf:name "Daniel T. Potts" .
--------------------
viaf:17238976 a foaf:Person ;
foaf:name "Daniel T. Potts" .
Describing an ISAW faculty member in Turtle
13. @prefix viaf: <http://viaf.org/viaf/> .
@prefix foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/#term_> .
@prefix dc: <http://purl.org/dc/terms/> .
viaf:17238976 a foaf:Person ;
foaf:name "Daniel T. Potts" .
<http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/39303>
dc:creator viaf:17238976 .
Linking an ISAW faculty member to a digital
publication
15. @prefix viaf: <http://viaf.org/viaf/> .
@prefix foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/#term_> .
@prefix dc: <http://purl.org/dc/terms/> .
@prefix p: <http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/> .
@prefix rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .
viaf:17238976 a foaf:Person ;
foaf:name "Daniel T. Potts" .
<http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/39303>
dc:creator viaf:17238976 ;
rdfs:label "Aksum",
"Auksome" ;
rdfs:comment "Present-day Aksum in Ethiopia. The center of the Aksumite
Kingdom, a maritime trading power that flourished from the first to the tenth
centuries AD. The city was listed as UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980." .
Linking an ISAW faculty member to a digital
publication
17. viaf:17238976
foaf:Person
"Daniel T. Potts"
pleiades:39303
dc:creator
foaf:name
(is) a
"Aksum"
"Auksome"
"Present-day Aksum in
Ethiopia. The center of
the Aksumite
Kingdom, , a maritime
trading power that
flourished from..."
rdfs:label
rdfs:label
rdfs:description
<http://isaw.nyu.edu/people/faculty/daniel-t-potts>
foaf:prim
aryTopic
(is) a
foaf:Document
18. viaf:17238976
foaf:Person
"Daniel T. Potts"
pleiades:39303
dc:creator
foaf:name
(is) a
"Aksum"
"Auksome"
"Present-day Aksum in
Ethiopia. The center of
the Aksumite
Kingdom, , a maritime
trading power that
flourished from..."
rdfs:label
rdfs:labelrdfs:description
<http://www.paregorios.org/me>
dc:contributor
"Tom Elliott"
foaf:name
<http://isaw.nyu.edu/people/faculty/daniel-t-potts>
foaf:prim
aryTopic
(is) a
foaf:Document
foaf:Person
(is) a
21. Openness
Photo of façade of the Museum of Early Trades and Crafts, Madison, NJ
Photographed by Tom Elliott, 29 May 2013
Notas do Editor
what could we do to tell the public, prospective students, and other scholars about the research interests, publications, and other scholarly activities of our faculty, students, visiting scholars, and alumnican we aggregate that telling so as to paint a comprehensive picture of the faculty, of the student body, of the entire community that is ISAW, in something more than a block of prose?could it update automatically, without individuals having to update their profile pages manually?couldn't we just get JSTOR, Worldcat, and other sources of information to automatically inform our website when one of our people publishes something?when our director Roger Bagnall edits a new ostracon or papyrus in papyri.info, shouldn't it just automatically show up here?what if Dan Potts edits and improves a Wikipedia page on a topic in Iranian archaeology? what if one of our students, say MenrnoushSoroush publishes a batch of photos of Persian water-management systems?and what if we had access to associated information: not just date of publication but date(s)/periods associated with the content. not just place of publication, but archaeological sites depicted in photos or discussed in text; ancient placenames mentioned?what if an alumnus of our Visiting Research Scholars Program, say Gilles Bransbourg, publishes a born-digital monograph on Roman economy and coinage that cites and discusses a number of specific numismatic types and coin issues that we could programmatically and automatically track back to the associated mints, emperors, and hoard findspots?could we produce a heatmap of an individual's scholarly footprint? could we tie it to a timeline or make it animated? could it update automatically?could we produce an automatic list of a person's publications – combining both born-digital and dead-tree outputs – without requiring the individual to enter anything into our website other than some identifying information for themselves (in other words, no more maintaining your publications list by hand?)Could we use these data, these profiles of scholarly input as "fingerprints", characterizing a particular individual's scholarly interests? Could those fingerprints be used to automatically trawl the major digital aggregators of published scholarly content, and push alerts to our people about newly noticed material of potential interest? What about other scholars with similar interest as deduced from their publishing fingerprints? Could the publishing venues used by our community enrich the range of sources we're monitoring for new material?Could we offer anonymous users anywhere on the web a richer experience by clubbing together with other projects to surface related material, or potentially related material, alongside content of immediate interest to that user?NOT A NEW IDEA, BUT THE TECHNOLOGY IS HERE. ISAW – along with everyone else in this room – is working to make this (and related) visions a reality.
linked data: like talking to a precocious six-year-old with excellent language skills, perfect memory, and absolutely no imagination,intuition, or initiative whatsoever
Describe VIAF look up Dan PottsDescribe FOAF show spec page and the vocabulary terms