Modelling of Archival User Needs - Steffen Hennicke

co-funded by the European Union
Modelling of Archival User Needs
Steffen Hennicke
Berlin School of Library and Information Science
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
27.06.2014
APEX, Dublin

Modelling of Archival User Needs, APEX 2013 227.06.2013
Research Context
• The thesis investigates the hypothesis that
●
there are sets of typical patterns in user enquiries to archives,
●
these patterns can be formally represented in a ontological model.
• Addresses prevailing research issues:
●
What are the information needs of users of archives?
●
What questions do users pose to archives?
●
Cornerstone for the design of better access and discovery
systems for the huge (but largely dormant) information
potential of archives and other historical knowledge bases.

Research Interest
• Provide empirical insight into the nature of written
user enquiries in free text to archives.
• Investigate how common patterns of enquiries can
be reasonably represented in an ontological model
in order to produce adequate answers for the user.
• Main Research Question: “Is there a hypothetical
ontological model which can represent user enquiries
and their probable interpretations as formal queries
against a model of the archival target world that
would adequately answer the enquiry or its implicit
purpose?”

Research Data
• Federal Archives of Germany (Bundesarchiv)
• Written “Reference Questions” contain largely unfiltered
information needs.
• 60 user files with 546 single questions
– 260 questions explicit or implicit “resource discovery”
– 70 questions “factual”
– 216 questions “other”
• In total, 330 questions (“resource discovery” and “factual”)
are currently being scrutinized for common patterns.

Methodological Approach
• Wendy Duff and Catherine Johnson (2001)
– Analysis of E-mail Reference Questions
– Type of Questions
– Type of Wanted and Given Information
• 2-Step-Interpretation of Questions
– Wanted Information: Explicit user perspective
– Context of Information: Relations between information entities
– Aim: To find common patterns questions
• Ontology Engineering: Generalisation and formalisation of common patterns
• Ontological model: CIDOC CRM
– Empirical based Conceptual Reference Model (CRM) for the cultural heritage domain
– Conceptualizes information and history around the notion of events

Example
• Context: A source I would like to see are the police-
and surveillance reports from the Weimar Republic
which are about revolutionary movements. I would like
to know what the surveillance agency of the Reich (or
the ones of the Länder) had to say about [person
name].
• Question 1: Do you know if the Bundesarchiv holds
such documents?
• Question 2: Which agency of the Reich was
responsible for the surveillance of revolutionary
movements? The Reich or the Länder?

Example – Wanted Information
• First Interpretation: Which are probable and adequate answers
to the question?
• Question 1 (material-finding): “pointers” to documents…
– …about [“person name”]
– …about “revolutionary movements”
• Question 2 (fact-finding): name of a legal body
• Given Contextual Information
– name of a specific actor (“[person name]”)
– type of a group (“revolutionary movements”)
– type of a legal body (“surveillance agency of the Reich”)
– type of documents (“police- and surveillance reports”)
– name of a period (“Weimar Republic”)

Example – CIDOC CRM
• Second Interpretation: How to translate the interpretation
of the question to CIDOC CRM?
• CIDOC CRM: Historical entities are connected through events.
• Question 1: The documents in question are the result of a
“surveillance activity” targeted at a specific type of group.
• Question 2: The legal body whose name is in question was
involved in an “surveillance activity” which was targeted at
a specific type of group and a specific actor.
• The common denominator is a “documentation activity”
which is the most general abstraction of a “surveillance
activity”.

Example – Question 1
Original Question: Do
you know if the
Bundesarchiv holds such
documents?

Example – Question 2
Original Question: Which
agency of the Reich was
responsible for the
surveillance of revolutionary
movements?

Documentation-Activity

Example – Documentation-
Activity
• Question 1 and 2 and their interpretations have
shared patterns which can be unified:
“Documentation-Activity”.
• New Classes and Properties to the CIDOC CRM
– E7.1 Documentation Activity
– Self-Documentation
– Documentation of Others
– E29.1 Mandate
– Several properties (e.g. “follows mandate”, “has mandate”)

Value and Potential
• Formal model of (archival) user needs.
– Strong conceptual and empirical reference for the design of
(archival) information systems.
– Design and extension of (archival) metadata schemas.
• Method to formalise (archival) user needs.
– 2-Step-Interpretation of user questions.
• Unobtrusive access layer to archival holdings.
– Does not interfere with archival documentation principles.
– Maybe with documentation practices.
• Extensible context layer for archival holdings.
– Connect to information outside of the archive.

Feasibility
• CIDOC-CRM representations exists for RDF(S)/OWL.
• Case study with EAD encoded finding aids.
• Documentation Activity explicates the (historical)
context of the creation of documents.
• (Semi-)automatic means of information extraction
(NLP).
• Pro-active documentation for high-value collections.
• Community-based contributions.

Modelling of Archival User Needs - Steffen Hennicke

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