I am putting ideas together for a project that I am referring to as "Structured
History." The objective is to create a systematic way of accessing information of an
historical nature within an ontological context that would permit historical reasoning.
The elements of the project are (1) access to structured historical information, which
WikiData is beginning to provide, and (2) relating the body of structured information to
one or more overall ontological frameworks, and then providing the tools for accessing,
displaying and analyzing the data. I have not yet identified an ontology that would be
most appropriate for historical purposes, other than an EU funded project called Papyrus
http://www.ict-papyrus.eu - but this seems to be used by no one. Therefore, I would
suggest that the development of an historical ontology (possibly building on the work of
Papyrus, which in turn built on the museum ontology CIDAR) be part of a "structured
history" project.
The model consists of "historical entities" that can be anything that exists or
existed in time and place (animate, human or inanimate - book, river), Places, and Events
(which may be nested so that a War event can consist of a sequence of Battle events).
If a project of this scope were undertaken, it could provide the framework within which
other projects, such as the history of science, could be developed. Issues with regard to
WikiData are: (1) to what degree will information (that may be available in Wikipedia
articles) be structured sufficiently for incorporation into the structured history
project? (2) How can historical narratives be broken down into elements that can be
collected in a meaningful way that retains semantic validity (veracity)? The system
should be comprehensive enough that all information and artifacts in museums and libraries
could be incorporated, either directly into the ontology or by cross-reference (to CIDAR
for instance).
I would be interested to see if there would be support for such an endeavor, and for
incorporating it into the proposal for WikiData for Research.
Thanks - Sam Smith (SammyWiki)
Michigan
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Today's Topics:
1. Use cases for Wikidata in research contexts (Daniel Mietchen)
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Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 18:43:06 +0100
From: Daniel Mietchen <daniel.mietchen(a)googlemail.com>
To: "Discussion list for the Wikidata project."
<wikidata-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: [Wikidata-l] Use cases for Wikidata in research contexts
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Dear all,
we are building the Wikidata for Research proposal [1] around use cases for Wikidata (or
Wikibase) in research contexts (cf. Task 4.1).
So if you are using Wikidata or Wikibase in research contexts already, or are
contemplating to do so, we'd appreciate your comments.
The same goes for use cases for DBpedia that would be enhanced by having a Wikidata/
Wikibase implementation.
Thanks,
Daniel
[1]
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Wikidata_for_research
--
http://www.naturkundemuseum-berlin.de/en/institution/mitarbeiter/mietchen-d…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Daniel_Mietchen/Publications
http://okfn.org
http://wikimedia.org
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