Presentation at the Open University Digital Humanities Colloquium - 08/07/2011 #dighumOU

1. Humanities Research with the Web of Data Mathieu d’Aquin - @mdaquin Knowledge Media Institute, the Open University

2. Data… … are at the center of research, especially when collaboration is involved. … traditionally involve heavy, IT-centric, monolithic processes and mechanisms http://www.flickr.com/photos/eiriks/3359730744/

3. Challenges How do we expose these data in such way that they make all the potential uses of it feasible? How do we expose these data so that they can connect to other collections, open information resources, etc? How do we benefit from other information resources to enrich these data, derive new research questions, connect them to aspects not originally thought about? http://www.flickr.com/photos/albinoflea/414906977/

4. Linked Data (tada!) http://lucero-project.info/lb/what-is-linked-data/ 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 to other Data http://linkeddata.org

5. data.open.ac.uk

6. Examples http://data.open.ac.uk/openlearn/aa100_1 relatesToCourse http://data.open.ac.uk/course/aa100 hasCourseware http://data.open.ac.uk/library/432284 http://data.open.ac.uk/course/aa100 isAvailableIn http://sws.geonames.org/2411586/ (Gibraltar)  Addressable and linkable data objects on the Web http://www.flickr.com/photos/fynes/155086399/

7. http://data.open.ac.uk/applications

8. 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 http://www.flickr.com/photos/janrito/4443369049/

9. Example: Reading Experience Database http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/ website Database Data collection Open University researchers Rest of the world

10. Event Location locatedIn subClassOf subClassOf Experience City Country date: Date readerInvolved originCountry textInvolved occupation givesBackgroundTo Person religion gender creator/editor LinkedEvent Ontology Document CITO Citation Ontology Dublin Core title: String description: String published: Date providesExcerptFor FOAF DBPedia http://lucero-project.info/lb/2011/03/connecting-the-reading-experience-database-to-the-web-of-data/

11. Examples http://www.flickr.com/photos/24801682@N08/5048079859/ http://data.open.ac.uk/red/person/austen-jane Jane Austen http://data.open.ac.uk/red/experience/10357 Experience: Jane Austen reading “History of Great Britain” http://data.open.ac.uk/red/document/1848957479 “History of Great Britain” http://data.open.ac.uk/red/document/1357827945-59 “Jane Austen’s letters” (where her reading of “History of Great Britain” is described) http://data.open.ac.uk/red/person/austen-jane sameAs http://dbpedia.org/resource/Jane_Austen These Web addresses refer to “data objects” connected through Web links

12. Browsing Linked Data

13. http://lucero-project.info/lb/2011/06/what-to-ask-linked-data/

14. External links

15. http://linksailor.com

17. 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 http://www.flickr.com/photos/markchapmanphoto/5139429152/

18. Think about… data.open.ac.uk data.gov.uk data.ordnancesurvey.co.uk data.archiveshub.ac.uk www.bl.uk/bibliographic/datafree.html data.bnf.fr semanticweb.cs.vu.nl/lod/am/ …

19. Thank You! More at: http://lucero-project.info @mdaquin