A talk for the Moore Institute for Humanities - People and documents are of enduring interest. Documents may be generated by individuals, collective groups, and administrations, on any number of topics. We are particularly interested in the relationships between people and documents. The most important relationships are creation (authors, illustrators, translators, ...), usage (e.g. association copies), and topic-of (e.g. people may be the subjects of biographies). In this lecture, we will talk about several approaches for modeling, or representing, people and documents. We pay particular attention to computer-based approaches to organization, and to organizing information for websites. We will talk briefly about TEI and XML, and the focus on my area of research expertise: modeling "linked data", a widely adopted approach for interlinking data. Adopted by the UK and US governments and search engines such as Google and Yahoo!, linked data has also been widely used in the digital humanities and by libraries, archives, and museums. It consists in naming objects of interest (be they authors, documents, or whatnot) and using standard data formats to enable interlinking.

1. Persons, documents, models:
organising and structuring
information for the Web
Jodi Schneider
Moore Institute Visiting Fellow
jschneider@pobox.com
@jschneider
Moore Institute for Humanities
National University of Ireland, Galway
4PM Tuesday June 23rd, Room G010

2. • Examples of persons and documents that we
might want to represent on the Web
• What to think about when organising and
structuring documents for the Web.
• Using identifiers & Linked Data
• How is Linked Data different from other
structured data used in digital humanities?
(e.g. TEI, XML)
Objectives

3. People

4. http://columbanus2015.eu/2012/02/09/hello-world/

5. http://aransongs.blogspot.ie/2012/10/don-gcead-bhlag-seo-uaim-thograios.html

6. http://www.nuigalway.ie/mooreinstitute/people/

7. http://landedestates.nuigalway.ie:8080/LandedEstates/jsp/family-show.jsp?id=490

8. Documents

9. What counts as a document?
http://demo.ossianonline.org/texts/1/fragments-of-ancient-poetry

10. What counts as a document?

11. What counts as a document?
• "A document is evidence in support of a fact."
- Suzanne Briet

12. What counts as a document?
• "A document is evidence in support of a fact."
- Suzanne Briet

13. http://aransongs.blogspot.ie/2012/10/don-gcead-bhlag-seo-uaim-thograios.html

14. "an image I found in the
James Hardiman Library
here at NUI Galway, an
image showing a man from
Cill Mhuirbhigh, Pat Pheaidí
Hernon (1903-1989),
singing a song while his
neighbour Neain Mhaidhc
Mhóir Hernon sits in the
fireplace of the ‘Man of
Aran’ cottage."
- Deirdre Ní Chonghaile

15. "an image I found in the
James Hardiman Library
here at NUI Galway, an
image showing a man from
Cill Mhuirbhigh, Pat Pheaidí
Hernon (1903-1989),
singing a song while his
neighbour Neain Mhaidhc
Mhóir Hernon sits in the
fireplace of the ‘Man of
Aran’ cottage."
- Deirdre Ní Chonghaile
Documents we have:
• the blog post
• the image

16. "an image I found in the
James Hardiman Library
here at NUI Galway, an
image showing a man from
Cill Mhuirbhigh, Pat Pheaidí
Hernon (1903-1989),
singing a song while his
neighbour Neain Mhaidhc
Mhóir Hernon sits in the
fireplace of the ‘Man of
Aran’ cottage."
- Deirdre Ní Chonghaile
Documents we have:
• the blog post
• the image
Potential documents:
• a song recording
• the cottage

17. "an image I found in the
James Hardiman Library
here at NUI Galway, an
image showing a man from
Cill Mhuirbhigh, Pat Pheaidí
Hernon (1903-1989),
singing a song while his
neighbour Neain Mhaidhc
Mhóir Hernon sits in the
fireplace of the ‘Man of
Aran’ cottage."
- Deirdre Ní Chonghaile
Documents we have:
• the blog post
• the image
Potential documents:
• a song recording
• the cottage

18. Documents ABOUT a document
• Provenance
• Oral history
• …

19. People as documents?
• To the extent that people serve as "evidence",
they could be ALSO be modelled as
documents.

20. Organising and Structuring
Documents

21. Aspects to consider
• Document type
• Document features
• What the document evidences

22. Aspects to consider
• Document type
– Text
– Image
– Sound
– Audiovisual
– Map
– If a combination of one or more of these – can it be
broken down further?
• Document features
• What the document evidences

23. Aspects to consider
• Document type
• Document features
– Natural structure?
– Affordances?
• What the document evidences

24. Linked Data for
Modeling Documents

25. Where Linked Data is used
• Mass Media
– BBC
– New York Times
– Guardian
• Scholarly Publishers
– Nature
– CrossRef
• Data Publishers
– USData.gov
– Data.gov.uk
– Central Statistics Office
• Libraries

26. • Using identifiers
• to enable access
• to add structure
• to link to other stuff
What is Linked Data?

27. Identifiers

31. http://aransongs.blogspot.ie/2012/10/don-gcead-bhlag-seo-uaim-thograios.html

32. "an image I found in the
James Hardiman Library
here at NUI Galway, an
image showing a man from
Cill Mhuirbhigh, Pat Pheaidí
Hernon (1903-1989),
singing a song while his
neighbour Neain Mhaidhc
Mhóir Hernon sits in the
fireplace of the ‘Man of
Aran’ cottage."
- Deirdre Ní Chonghaile
Places

33. "an image I found in the
James Hardiman Library
here at NUI Galway, an
image showing a man from
Cill Mhuirbhigh, Pat Pheaidí
Hernon (1903-1989),
singing a song while his
neighbour Neain Mhaidhc
Mhóir Hernon sits in the
fireplace of the ‘Man of
Aran’ cottage."
- Deirdre Ní Chonghaile
People

34. "an image I found in the
James Hardiman Library
here at NUI Galway, an
image showing a man from
Cill Mhuirbhigh, Pat Pheaidí
Hernon (1903-1989),
singing a song while his
neighbour Neain Mhaidhc
Mhóir Hernon sits in the
fireplace of the ‘Man of
Aran’ cottage."
- Deirdre Ní Chonghaile
Types of things

35. Why use identifiers?
• Make what you are talking about
unambiguous
• Pull in information from elsewhere
– images, descriptions, …
– from works describing the same people, places,
types of things

36. Large, growing body of linked data

37. How is Linked Data different from TEI
& XML

38. – Using identifiers
– to enable access
– to add structure
– to link to other stuff
What is Linked Data?

39. What does TEI make explicit?
structural divisions within a text
title-page, chapter, scene, stanza, line, etc
typographical elements
changes in typeface, special characters, etc
other textual features
grammatical structures, location of
illustrations, variant forms, etc
Slide credit: Susan Schreibman

40. XML as a tree
Document
Paragraph
Sentence Sentence Sentence
Paragraph
Sentence Sentence
Remember, everything must nest properly!
We use family tree terms: parent, child, sibling, ancestor, and descendent.
Slide credit: Susan Schreibman

41. Linked Data: Graphs are more
than trees

42. • Examples of persons and documents that we
might want to represent on the Web
• What to think about when organising and
structuring documents for the Web.
• Using identifiers & Linked Data
• How is Linked Data different from other
structured data used in digital humanities?
(e.g. TEI, XML)
Objectives