Reconciling and Using Historical Person Registers as Linked Open Data in the AcademySampo Portal and Data Service

This paper presents a method for extracting and reassembling a genealogical network automatically from a biographical register of historical people. The method is applied to a dataset of short textual biographies about all 28 000 Finnish and Swedish academic people educated in 1640-1899 in Finland. The aim is to connect and disambiguate the relatives mentioned in the biographies in order to build a continuous, genealogical network, which can be used in Digital Humanities for data and network analysis of historical academic people and their lives. An artificial neural network approach is presented for solving a supervised learning task to disambiguate relatives mentioned in the register descriptions using basic biographical information enhanced with an ontology of vocations and additional occasionally sparse genealogical information. Evaluation results of the record linkage are promising and provide novel insights into the problem of historical people register reconciliation. The outcome of the work has been used in practise as part of the in-use AcademySampo portal and linked open data service, a new member in the Sampo series of cultural heritage applications for Digital Humanities.Peer reviewe

Linked Open Data Service about Historical Finnish Academic People in 1640–1899

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Using the AcademySampo Portal and Data Service for Biographical and Prosopographical Research in Digital Humanities

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Extracting Genealogical Networks of Linked Data from Biographical Texts

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Modelling and Using Military Persons and Units as an Actor Ontology

Toimijaontologia mallintaa henkilöitä ja henkilöryhmiä linkitetyssä avoimessa datassa. Toimijaontologiamallin tarkoitus on mahdollistaa eri lähteiden aineistojen kokoaminen yhteen ja sen julkaisu yhdenmukaisessa formaatissa, jotta tietoa voidaan hyödyntää niin digitaalisten ihmistieteiden tutkimuksessa kuin tarjoamalla käyttöliittymiä aineiston selaamiseen visuaalisessa muodossa. Laadittu ontologia noudattaa toimija–tapahtuma-mallia. Siinä toimija mallinnetaan häneen liittyvien elämäkerrallisten tapahtumien summana. Ratkaisujen perustana käytettiin CIDOC CRM -standardia, millä haluttiin taata mallin helppo laajennettavuus sekä noudattaa kulttuurihistorialliselle datalle yhdenmukaista julkaisukäytäntöä. Työ on tehty osana laajempaa Sotasampo-projektia, johon kerättiin kattava tietokanta toisen maailmansodan aikaista aineistoa Suomen osalta. Oma osuuteni tässä työssä oli toimijaontologiamallin laatiminen sekä sen populointi sotilashenkilöillä ja -osastoilla. Aineisto on julkaistu avoimena datana (http://www.ldf.fi/dataset/warsa) ja on selattavissa Sotasampo-portaalissa (http://www.sotasampo.fi ).An actor ontology is used for modeling persons and groups in linked open data. The semantic ontology model enables combining material from various sources and publishing it in a harmonized format so that the data can be used in digital humanities research and as well for developing online portals. The actor ontology model represented in this work applies an actor-event model approach: the lifestory of an actor is modeled as a sum of biographical events. The solution is based on the CIDOC CRM standard providing an extensible semantic framework and an information standard for publishing culture historical data. This work has been done as a part of WarSampo project, where large collections of Finnish Second World War material were harmonized and provided as Linked Open Data. My part in the project was designing an actor ontology model and populating it with military persons and units collected from various sources. The WarSampo datasets are published as a Linked Open Data service (http://www.ldf.fi/dataset/warsa) and demonstrated in WarSampo portal (http://www.sotasampo.fi/en/)

U.S. Congress Prosopograher - A Tool for Prosopographical Research of Legislators

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U.S. Congress prosopographer - A tool for prosopographical research of legislators

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Analyzing the Lives of Finnish Academic People 1640–1899 in Nordic and Baltic Countries : AcademySampo Data Service and Portal

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Combining Faceted Search with Data-analytic Visualizations on Top of a SPARQL Endpoint

This paper discusses practical experiences on creating data-analytic visualizations in a browser, on top of a SPARQL endpoint based on the results of faceted search. Four use cases related to Digital Humanities research in proposography are discussed where the SPARQL Faceter tool was used and extended in different ways. The Faceter tool allows the user to select a group of people with shared properties, e.g., people with the same place of birth, gender, profession, or employer. The filtered data can then be visualized, e.g., as column charts, with business graphics, sankey diagrams, or on a map. The use cases examine the potential of visualization as well as automated knowledge discovery in Digital Humanities research.Peer reviewe

Bio CRM: A Data Model for Representing Biographical Data for Prosopographical Research

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