Exposing Humanities Data for Reuse and Linking

RED, linked data and the semantic web

Mathieu d’Aquin

Knowledge Media Institute, the Open University

LUCERO project, http://data.open.ac.uk

Motivation… • From my rather ignorant perspective, humanities

research = collecting data and using it for research and teaching

• RED is obviously a perfect example of this• Challenges:

– How do we expose this data in such way that it makes all the potential uses of it feasible

– How do we expose this data so that it can connect to other collections, open information resources, etc.

– How do we benefit from other information resources to enrich this data, derive new research questions, connect it to aspects not originally thought about…

Linked Data (tada!!)

• As set of principles and technologies for a Web of Data– Putting the “raw” data online in a

standard representation (RDF)– Make the data Web addressable

(URIs)– Link with to other Data

Linked Data

Linked Data at the OU?

ORO

Archive of Course Material

Library’sCatalogueOf Digital Content

OpenLearnContent

A/V MaterialPodcastsiTunesU

Data from Research Outputs

BBC

DBPedia

DBLP

RAE

geonames

data.gov.uk

data.open.ac.uk

Example Application

Linked data… and humanities

• Still early stage, but– Can there be a Web of Data for

humanities?– What are the implications? How can be

we benefit? – Is this going to happen naturally, or

should we make a particular effort

• RED: an early example exploring the potential of linked data for humanities research

Experience

Person

Document

EventLocation

City Countrydate: Date

subClassOf

subClassOf

locatedIn

readerInvolved

textInvolved givesBackgroundTo

title: Stringdescription: Stringpublished: Date

creator/editor

providesExcerptFor

occupation

religion

originCountry

gender

LinkedEvent Ontology

CITO Citation Ontology

Dublin Core

FOAF

DBPedia

Conclusion• The benefits of exposing your research data as

linked data is undeniable: allow for reuse and linking!– Still, requires efforts

• The potential of linking to other data is very promising– Connect things that don’t need to aggregated any

more. They are in the same data space: the Web…– With which come all the issues around provenance,

quality, trust, etc.

• This represents a serious conceptual shift in the way we manage and use academic/research/educational data