1. All-WP-Meeting-5 – T3.4 112.06.2014
Task 3.4
Overview and Aims
Steffen Hennicke (UBER)

2. All-WP-Meeting-5 – T3.4 212.06.2014
DOW on Task 3.4
•
Research Questions
(1)“What are the 'functional primitives' of the digital humanities?”
(2)“What kinds of 'reasoning' do digital humanists want to see
enabled by the data and information available [and currently not
available] in Europeana?”
(3)“Which types of operations do digital humanists expect to apply
to Europeana data?”
•
Participants
•
UBER, ONB, MPIWG, UIB
•
Deliverable
– Research Report on Scholarly Primitives in M36

3. All-WP-Meeting-5 – T3.4 312.06.2014
Scope of Task 3.4
• Principle Scope
– The digital humanist as a user of digital research tools in a Linked Data
environment.
• Observation
– too exclusive focus on content and infrastructure (e.g. Europeana or DARIAH)
– too often the starting point is what is there (tools) taxonomies on DH→
methods
• Principle Aims
– What does the humanist want to do with the digital tools?
– shift attention to conceptual issues of humanities in the digital realm
– initiate and encourage more reflection on humanities' methods in the digital
realm

4. All-WP-Meeting-5 – T3.4 412.06.2014
Scholarly Domain Model
• Principle Approach
– start from a top-down and humanistic perspective
– as a supplement for other approaches
– John Unsworth (2000) [JU00] “Scholarly Primitives”
• Scholarly Domain Model
– map of the generic humanistic research process
• primitives of scholarly work
– pragmatic “living-model” as a framework for
discussions on the humanities and the digital

5. All-WP-Meeting-5 – T3.4 512.06.2014
Scholarly Domain Model
“→ Intermediary Research Report on DH Scholarly Primitives (MS3)”

6. All-WP-Meeting-5 – T3.4 612.06.2014
What has been done?
• Scholarly Domain Model (SDM)
– provided input to initial specification of Pundit
– last presented at DH2013
– paper submitted to Literary and Linguistic Computing (LLC) (currently
under review)
• Digital Humanists Advisory Board (DHAB) meetings
– input to SDM
• SDM extended by “Scholarly Activities”
– specialize the Scholarly Primitives
– principle “types of operations” (e.g. selection, citation etc.)
– interviews with experts in collaboration with BWG
• Questionnaire on Primitives/Activities
– Wittgenstein Incubator (Task 1.4)

7. All-WP-Meeting-5 – T3.4 712.06.2014
What are we working on this year?
(1) Reasoning
•
What do humanists make of the triples?
•
focus on Pundit / ASK
(2) Experiments with Pundit
•
bottom-up approach and practical perspective
•
input on reasoning
•
input on “types of operations”
(3) Revision of the SDM
•
RDF representation of the SDM

8. All-WP-Meeting-5 – T3.4 812.06.2014
What kinds of 'Reasoning'?
• Semantic Web reasoning or human(ist)
reasoning?
– automated-reasoning tools have limitations for
humanities scholars [AZ09]
• require in-depth understanding of mathematical logics
• humanities deal with “vague, ambiguous, or even
contradictory” information
– in between “light-weight reasoning”?
• humanists' reasoning with triples
• using ASK and other visual aids

9. All-WP-Meeting-5 – T3.4 912.06.2014
Reasoning and Pundit / ASK
• How do humanist reason with the triple data they
created in Pundit?
– How do they understand the triples?
– How do they filter the triples?
– Which kinds of conclusions do they draw?
– What does trust, agreement or disagreement mean in this
context?
• The application of the Timeline or of Edgemap
visualisation already is reasoning:
– Which temporal sequences and semantic paths are relevant
for certain research questions?

10. All-WP-Meeting-5 – T3.4 1012.06.2014
Experiments with Pundit
• Use Case “Educational History”
– Georg-Eckert-Institut (GEI)
– two trained historians (research assistants)
– collaboration on shared research topic
– cooperation with “The World Of Children” (the whole project is devoted
to our principle topic)
• Use Case “Digital Photos as Historical Sources”
– History Department of HUB
– seminar with history students on historical critique of digital sources
• Use Case “Digital Editorial Science”
– Berlin-Brandenburgisches Akademie der Wissenschaften (BBAW) and
Fachhochschule Potsdam (FHP)
– three students working on devising and applying editorial guidelines

11. All-WP-Meeting-5 – T3.4 1112.06.2014
Experiments with Pundit
• Set-Up
– Preparation Phase with Teachers / Participants
• How do relevant and genuine research questions translate into the context
of Linked Data and Pundit?
• What does “comparing” or “selection” mean to certain user groups in the
context of specific research tasks?
• Which classes and properties do we need to enable certain “types of
operations”?
• Which inferences (reasoning) do students need to draw in order to answer
the research questions?
– Introductory Workshop and Homework
• Students work with Pundit (Bookmarklet) and ASK
– Closing Workshop
• Which inferences do students draw from the data in Pundit / ASK?

12. All-WP-Meeting-5 – T3.4 1212.06.2014
Revision of the SDM
• Explicit RDF representation of the SDM
– means to revise the SDM
– explicit representation of “types of operations”
• comparing or selection as RDF templates
– exercise in building bridges: making the model explicit and usable
for applications
– starting point for future developments and implementation
• SDM as a tool for monitoring activities in Pundit
– Lives at: http://webprotege.stanford.edu/
• Finalizing “Scholarly Activities” (evaluation of interviews)
• put SDM in context with similar current efforts
– e.g. DARIAH, Arts-Humanities, EuropeanaCloud

13. All-WP-Meeting-5 – T3.4 1312.06.2014
References
• [WM05] McCarty, W. (2005). Humanities computing.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
• [JU00] Unsworth, J. (2000). Scholarly Primitives: what
methods do humanities researchers have in common, and
how might our tools reflect this? Symposium on Humanities
Computing formal methods experimental practice. Retrieved
from http://people.brandeis.edu/~unsworth/Kings.5-
00/primitives.html (03.02.2014)
• [AZ09] Zöllner-Weber, A. (2009). Ontologies and Logic
Reasoning as Tools in Humanities? Digital Humanities
Quarterly, 3(4).