This document discusses linking maritime historical data to provide integrated access. It describes several Dutch maritime datasets that could be connected, including ship voyages, muster rolls, and payroll records. Named entities are extracted from digitized historical newspapers using machine learning and linked to ships and events. Over 179,000 links between newspaper articles and ships are created. Provenance information is added using PROV-O. The linked data is analyzed and visualized to enable exploratory search of the historical media through a digital submarine user interface.

1. Dutch Ships and
Sailors
Victor de Boer - v.de.boer@vu.nl
Digitale historische kranten als big data 24-3-2015
DIVE

2. Dutch Ships and Sailors
Victor de Boer, Matthias van Rossum, Jur Leinenga, Rik Hoekstra
With input from Andrea Bravo Balado and Robin Ponstein
Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision / VU University Amsterdam
v.de.boer@vu.nl

3. The Problem:
((Maritime) historical) data is not integrated
25+ Maritime datasets; Heterogeneous

4. The solution
Well, Linked Data obviously!

5. KB Delpher
Dutch-Asiatic Shipping (DAS) –
Voyages (Huygens ING)
“VOC Opvarenden”
Mustering and payroll information (DANS Easy)
Dutch Ships and Sailors

6. DAS
GZMVOC
MDB
VOCOPV
Begunstig
den
VOCOPV
Soldijboek
en
PROV
AAT
VOCOPV
Opvaren
den
foaf
owl:sameAs
dss:hasKBLink
rdfs:subClassOf,
rdfs:subPropertyOf
dss:DAS link
skos :exactMatch

7. Links to original scans

8. Linking to Historical newspapers
• Use ML to detect links
between ships and historical
newspaper articles (delpher.nl)
– Features: ship name, time
intervals, captain’s names, ship
type, named entities, keywords,
background knowledge
• 179,120 links
- Andrea Bravo Balado

9. Example
[HARLINGEN, 24 October.] . «et gestrande
Zweedsche schip , waarvan wij ons vorig no.
melding maakten , is door de 'eepboot van hier
afgebragt en hier binnengede u BiJ die
gelegenheid werd ons medegeeeid, dat nog vier
vaartuigen op Terschelling aren gestrand.
Tevens is het berigt ontvan°e > dat het hier
behoorende schoonerschip Transit, kapitein
Schaap, in de Noordzee is gezonken, nadat het
achterschip was weggeslagen ; een ligtmatroos
verloor daarbij het leven. Mede zijn hier drie
vreemde schepen met meer en minder zware
averij binnengeloopen.
Spoiler alert! It sank in the North Sea.

10. Provenance (PROV-O)
• Individual named graphs have provenance
information
– Who made it (people/software?)
– Based on what source
– Content confidence
• Matches historical
science requirements

11. Data analysis and visualisation

12. Take home
• Linked Data principles are a great fit to digital
history requirements
– Heterogeneous models/datasets, light-weight
reusable integration
– Multiple levels of normalisation, through separate
named graphs
– SW Provenance matches Historical Provenance
• Watch out when you sail your Schooner into the
North Sea

13. DIVE INTO THE EVENT-BASED
BROWSING OF LINKED HISTORICAL
MEDIA
VICTOR DE BOER, JOHAN OOMEN, OANA INEL, LORA
AROYO,
ELCO VAN STAVEREN, WERNER HELMICH AND DENNIS DE
BEURS

14. DIGITAL
HUMANITIES
RESEARCHERS
MediaresearcherLarsArveRøsslandoftheUniversityofBergen.(Photo:AndreasR.Graven)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/drainrat/14779928998/
EXPLORATIVE
SEARCH
Erp, M. van; Oomen, J.; Segers, R.; Akker, C. van de; Aroyo, L.; Jacobs, G.; Legêne, S; Meij, L. van der; Ossenbruggen, J.R. van; Schreiber,
G. Automatic Heritage Metadata Enrichment with Historic Events Museums and the Web 2011
http://www.museumsandtheweb.com/mw2011/papers/automatic_heritage_metadata_enrichment_with_hi

15. DATA: OPENIMAGES.EU
Open videos Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision
3000, mostly news broadcasts

16. DATA: DELPHER.NL
Scans of Radio bulletins (hand annotated)
• 1937 – 1984
• 1.5 Million OCR’ed and NErred

17. ENTITY EXTRACTION
• CROWDTRUTH.ORG
ENTITYEXTRACTION
EVENTS CROWDSOURCINGANDLINKINGTOCONCEPTS
THROUGHCROWDTRUTH.ORG
SEGMENTATION & KEYFRAMES
LINKINGEVENTS AND
CONCEPTSTO KEYFRAMES

18. SIMPLE EVENT MODEL (SEM),
OPENANNOTATION (OA) AND SKOS
DIVE:MEDIA
OBJECT
SEM:EVEN
T
SEM:PLACE
SEM:TIME
SEM:ACTOR
SKOS:CONCEPT
OA:ANNOTATI
ON
• LINKS TO EUROPEANA (MULTILINGUAL)
• LINKS TO DBPEDIA

19. INFINITY OF
EXPLORATION
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mibuchat/2774251415https://www.flickr.com/photos/benjcarson/245171885
DIGITAL
SUBMARINE UI

20. DEMO
• DIVE.BEELDENGELUID.NL

21. THANK YOU
https://www.flickr.com/photos/robysaltori/
DIVE.BEELDENGELUID.NL
v.de.boer@vu.nl