Presentation at DH 2016

1. Integrating Digital
Epigraphies
http://ides.io
Hugh Cayless, Duke Collaboratory for Classics Computing
@hcayless

2. IG I³ 40
• Inscriptiones Graecae
• Volume One (inscriptions of Attica before Euclid)
• Third Edition
• Number 40

3. IG I³ 40
• IG I-3 40 (SEG)
• IG I[3] 40 (Claros)
• IG I3 40 (OCR-ed form of IG I³ 40)
• and, of course, there’s IG I² 39…

4. <ides:phi:40> a <http://lawd.info/ontology/Edition> ;
<http://lawd.info/ontology/where>
<http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/579888> , <http://www.trismegistos.org/place/373> ;
<http://purl.org/dc/terms/identifier>
"IG I³ 40" ;
<http://purl.org/dc/terms/isPartOf>
<ides:phi:IG-I³> ;
<http://purl.org/dc/terms/source>
<ides:t000003n> ;
<http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#sameAs>
<ides:claros:IG-1%5B3%5D-40> , <ides:seg:ig-i.3-40> ;
<http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/page>
<http://epigraphy.packhum.org/text/40> ;
<ides:collection> <ides:phi> .

5. <ides:phi:40> a <http://lawd.info/ontology/Edition> ;
<http://lawd.info/ontology/where>
<http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/579888> , <http://www.trismegistos.org/place/373> ;
<http://purl.org/dc/terms/identifier>
"IG I³ 40" ;
<http://purl.org/dc/terms/isPartOf>
<ides:phi:IG-I³> ;
<http://purl.org/dc/terms/source>
<ides:t000003n> ;
<http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#sameAs>
<ides:claros:IG-1%5B3%5D-40> , <ides:seg:ig-i.3-40> ;
<http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/page>
<http://epigraphy.packhum.org/text/40> ;
<ides:collection> <ides:phi> .
IDEs’ name for the inscription
associated places
IDEs’ name for PHI 40
Where it is on the Web
IDEs’ name for the same Edition
from Claros and SEG

6. <ides:phi:40>
<http://purl.org/dc/terms/source>
<ides:t000003n> .
• How do we say anything about this “fact”?
• How would we know how we know that PHI40 is a
publication of the inscription we’ve named
ides:t000003n?
• What do we do if our facts change?

7. Data reconciliation
• We get data from multiple sources
• Every Edition must derive from an Inscription.
• If we don’t immediately know two Editions from two
sources derive from the same Inscription, we’ll
make up two Inscription ids on ingest. These will
have to be merged later.

8. IG I³ 40
(PHI)
IG I[3] 40
(Claros)
A B
Before Merge
IG I³ 40
(PHI)
IG I[3] 40
(Claros)
A B
After Merge

9. Now what?
IG I³ 40
(PHI)
IG I[3] 40
(Claros)
A B
Who made this connection? When and why?
When did this
become invalid?
What replaced it?

10. <ides:phi:40>
<http://purl.org/dc/terms/source>
<ides:t000003n> .
predicate object
ides:phi:40 dc:source ides:t000003n
• A property graph (Neo4J) rather than a triple store
• Preserves RDF semantics and can ingest and export RDF
Edition relationship Inscription

11. Pros
• We can say anything we like about relationships, in-
place, without needing workarounds.
• While still maintaining the Linked Data/RDF
semantics we want.
• Powerful query language (Cypher)

12. Cons
• No SPARQL (though potential for adding it later)
• If we use lots of extra capabilities, we’ll need to
think about how (or whether) to express them in
RDF.
• There’s not a great variety of property graph
databases.

13. Questions
• Is RDF really suitable for the highly-contingent facts
we have in the Humanities?
• There are various ways to solve this problem using
RDF tools (reification, named graphs, etc.). Should
we standardize on one of those instead?
• What sorts of information should we capture about
interventions?