Harmonizing and publishing heterogeneous premodern manuscript metadata as Linked Open Data

Mikko Koho,Kevin Page,Jouni Tuominen,Benjamin Heller,Esko Ikkala,David Lewis,Mitch Fraas,Hanno Wijsman,Doug Emery,Toby Burrows,Athanasios Velios,Emma Thomson,Lynn Ransom,Andrew Morrison,Guillaume Porte,Eero Hyvönen

doi:10.1002/asi.24499

Abstract

AbstractManuscripts are a crucial form of evidence for research into all aspects of premodern European history and culture, and there are numerous databases devoted to describing them in detail. This descriptive information, however, is typically available only in separate data silos based on incompatible data models and user interfaces. As a result, it has been difficult to study manuscripts comprehensively across these various platforms. To address this challenge, a team of manuscript scholars and computer scientists worked to create “Mapping Manuscript Migrations” (MMM), a semantic portal, and a Linked Open Data service. MMM stands as a successful proof of concept for integrating distinct manuscript datasets into a shared platform for research and discovery with the potential for future expansion. This paper will discuss the major products of the MMM project: a unified data model, a repeatable data transformation pipeline, a Linked Open Data knowledge graph, and a Semantic Web portal. It will also examine the crucial importance of an iterative process of multidisciplinary collaboration embedded throughout the project, enabling humanities researchers to shape the development of a digital platform and tools, while also enabling the same researchers to ask more sophisticated and comprehensive research questions of the aggregated data.

Highlights

The study of premodern manuscripts, or manuscripts produced before the age of print, is an important research area for digital humanities in medieval studies (Da Rold & Maniaci, 2015).1As direct witnesses to their times and places of production, these manuscripts are a rich and complex source of critical evidence for research in a wide range of disciplines, including textual and literary studies, historical studies, cultural heritage, and the fine arts
This paper focuses on four key areas where collaboration was crucial: the identification of a set of research questions; the development of the data model, based on CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM)5 (Doerr, 2003) and FRBRoo6 (Riva et al, 2009); a repeatable data transformation pipeline for aggregating and aligning distributed metadata into a global knowledge graph (KG); and the publishing and dissemination of the data through a Semantic Web (SW) portal and a Linked Open Data (LOD) service
This paper presented an approach for harmonizing heterogeneous manuscript metadata databases with a focus on the manuscript description and provenance, leading to four primary results

Summary

| INTRODUCTION

The study of premodern manuscripts, or manuscripts produced before the age of print, is an important research area for digital humanities in medieval studies (Da Rold & Maniaci, 2015).. Key to the success of MMM was the back-and-forth process of collaboration among humanists and computer scientists throughout the project, from the initial identification of the research questions through the data modeling, transformation work, and interface design required to build the semantic portal and LOD service. This collaboration occurred primarily in two working groups: one focused on the requirements of manuscript provenance scholarship, and the other on the information science research needed to meet those requirements. Integrate, and reconcile heterogeneous manuscript metadata from distributed data sources?

How to publish Linked Data for digital manuscript research?

| Related work

| EVALUATION

| CONCLUSIONS AND LESSONS LEARNED