Adrian StevensonSenior Technical Innovations Coordinator

Mimas, University of Manchester, UK@adrianstevenson

Lessons from ‘Linking Lives’ and ‘WW1 Discovery’ Projects

http://archiveshub.ac.uk/locah/

http://archiveshub.ac.uk/linkinglives/

Martha Beatrice Webb

 Place of birth: Gloucester, EnglandPlace of death: Liphook, Hampshire, England

Life dates: 1858-1943Epithet: social reformer and historianFamily name: Webb

Image

from: Beatrice Webb lettersBeatrice Webb (1858 - 1943). Fabian Socialist, social reformer, writer, historian, diarist. Wife, collaborator and assistant of Sidney Webb, later Lord Passfield. Together they contributed to the radical ideology first of the Liberal Party and later of the Labour Party. from: Beatrice Webb, A summer holiday in Scotland, 1884.Beatrice Webb (1858-1943), nee Potter, social reformer and diarist. Married to Sidney Webb, pioneers of social science. She was involved in many spheres of political and social activity including the Labour Party, Fabianism, social observation, investigations into poverty, development of socialism, the foundation of the National Health Service and post war welfare state, the London School of

Biographical Notes

Works

Our PartnershipMy ApprenticeshipThe case for the factory actsBeatrice Webb’s diaries; edited by Margaret ColeThe Diary

Knows

http://dbpedia.org/page/George_Bernard_Shaw

http://dbpedia.org/page/Sidney_Webb,_1st_Baron_Passfield

Some Challenges / Lessons Learnt

• Steep learning curve• Difficult data, URI persistence• Linking data not straightforward• Keeping data up to date• How sustainable are the data sources?• Can you track the provenance of data sources?• Are data licensing issues covered?

Hub data inconsistencies

• Winston Leonard Churchill• Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill• Churchill, Sir, Winston Leonard Spencer, 1874-

1965, knight, prime minister and historian• Churchill, Winston Leonard, 1874-1965, prime

minister• Churchill, Sir Winston, 1874-1965, knight,

statesman and historian

Understanding Vocabs & Ontologies

Linking Places

http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb738ms58

http://viaf.org/viaf/44311096/

Grace Ford, 1896-1941 ‘same as’ Grace Ford?

Linking Names

Thoughts on What Next?

• We still need more convincing use / business cases– Clear articulation of what researchers actually gain

by bringing diverse data together• We still need more and better tools

– But this depends on use cases• Cultural heritage not working together enough

– better collaboration on things like name URIs• Coordinated consistent approach for vocabs

927233355446

ww1.discovery.ac.uk

WW1 Discovery Project

• Exemplar illustrating principles of the JISC Discovery initiative

• Discovery about advocating ‘open’ and ‘aggregating’

• Make digital content more discoverable by people and machines

• Building WW1 aggregation API and discovery layer

www.discovery.ac.uk

WW1 Discovery: How?

• Aggregate data from existing APIs – NMM, V&A, Europeana

• Help others with example API – BL, MCR Archives, Welsh Voices, LSE

• Formats: SOLR, RSS, OpenSearch, OAI-PMH, CSV

Some Challenges• Difficulties merging data

– varied content– Relevance ranking dubious

• Lack of content– images– geo-data

• Content licenses not open• Lack of APIs

Adrian Stevensonadrian.stevenson@manchester.ac.uk@adrianstevenson

More on Linked Data at:

http://archiveshub.ac.uk/linkinglives/

http://data.archiveshub.ac.uk/

http://archiveshub.ac.uk/locah/

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