Geo-Semantic Labelling of Open Data. SEMANTiCS 2018-14th International Conference on Semantic Systems

In the past years Open Data has become a trend among governments to increase transparency and public engagement by opening up national, regional, and local datasets. However, while many of these datasets come in semi-structured file formats, they use di ff erent schemata and lack geo-references or semantically meaningful links and descriptions of the corresponding geo-entities. We aim to address this by detecting and establishing links to geo-entities in the datasets found in Open Data catalogs and their respective metadata descriptions and link them to a knowledge graph of geo-entities. This knowledge graph does not yet readily exist, though, or at least, not a single one: so, we integrate and interlink several datasets to construct our (extensible) base geo-entities knowledge graph: (i) the openly available geospatial data repository GeoNames, (ii) the map service OpenStreetMap, (iii) country-specific sets of postal codes, and (iv) the European Union's classification system NUTS. As a second step, this base knowledge graph is used to add semantic labels to the open datasets, i.e., we heuristically disambiguate the geo-entities in CSV columns using the context of the labels and the hierarchical graph structure of our base knowledge graph. Finally, in order to interact with and retrieve the content, we index the datasets and provide a demo user interface. Currently we indexed resources from four Open Data portals, and allow search queries for geo-entities as well as full-text matches at http://data.wu.ac.at/odgraph/

Trends in Digital Cultural Heritage Management and Applications

We present some recent trends in the field of digital cultural heritage management and applications including digital cultural data curation, interoperability, open linked data publishing, crowd sourcing, visualization, platforms for digital cultural heritage, and applications. We present some examples from research and development projects of MUSIC/TUC in those areas.The Fourth International Conference on Digital Presentation and Preservation of Cultural and Scientific Heritage—DiPP2014 is supported by the Ministry of Education and Science and is under the patronage of UNESCO

SPEIR: Scottish Portals for Education, Information and Research. Final Project Report: Elements and Future Development Requirements of a Common Information Environment for Scotland

The SPEIR (Scottish Portals for Education, Information and Research) project was funded by the Scottish Library and Information Council (SLIC). It ran from February 2003 to September 2004, slightly longer than the 18 months originally scheduled and was managed by the Centre for Digital Library Research (CDLR). With SLIC's agreement, community stakeholders were represented in the project by the Confederation of Scottish Mini-Cooperatives (CoSMiC), an organisation whose members include SLIC, the National Library of Scotland (NLS), the Scottish Further Education Unit (SFEU), the Scottish Confederation of University and Research Libraries (SCURL), regional cooperatives such as the Ayrshire Libraries Forum (ALF)1, and representatives from the Museums and Archives communities in Scotland. Aims; A Common Information Environment For Scotland The aims of the project were to: o Conduct basic research into the distributed information infrastructure requirements of the Scottish Cultural Portal pilot and the public library CAIRNS integration proposal; o Develop associated pilot facilities by enhancing existing facilities or developing new ones; o Ensure that both infrastructure proposals and pilot facilities were sufficiently generic to be utilised in support of other portals developed by the Scottish information community; o Ensure the interoperability of infrastructural elements beyond Scotland through adherence to established or developing national and international standards. Since the Scottish information landscape is taken by CoSMiC members to encompass relevant activities in Archives, Libraries, Museums, and related domains, the project was, in essence, concerned with identifying, researching, and developing the elements of an internationally interoperable common information environment for Scotland, and of determining the best path for future progress