Browsing by Author "Emery, Doug"

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Harmonizing and publishing heterogeneous premodern manuscript metadata as Linked Open Data
(2022-02) Koho, Mikko; Burrows, Toby; Hyvonen, Eero; Ikkala, Esko; Page, Kevin; Ransom, Lynn; Tuominen, Jouni; Emery, Doug; Fraas, Mitch; Heller, Benjamin; Lewis, David; Morrison, Andrew; Porte, Guillaume; Thomson, Emma; Velios, Athanasios; Wijsman, Hanno
A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
Manuscripts 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.
Medieval Manuscripts and Their Migrations: Using SPARQL to Investigate the Research Potential of an Aggregated Knowledge Graph
(2022-08-18) Burrows, Toby; Cleaver, Laura; Emery, Doug; Hyvönen, Eero; Koho, Mikko; Ransom, Lynn; Thomson, Emma; Wijsman, Hanno
A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
Although the RDF query language SPARQL has a reputation for being opaque and difficult for traditional humanists to learn, it holds great potential for opening up vast amounts of Linked Open Data to researchers willing to take on its challenges. This is especially true in the field of premodern manuscripts studies as more and more datasets relating to the study of manuscript culture are made available online. This paper explores the results of a two-year long process of collaborative learning and knowledge transfer between the computer scientists and humanities researchers from the Mapping Manuscript Migrations (MMM) project to learn and apply SPARQL to the MMM dataset. The process developed into a wider investigation of the use of SPARQL to analyse the data, refine research questions, and assess the research potential of the MMM aggregated dataset and its Knowledge Graph. Through an examination of a series of six SPARQL query case studies, this paper will demonstrate how the process of learning and applying SPARQL to query the MMM dataset returned three important and unexpected results: 1) a better understanding of a complex and imperfect dataset in a Linked Open Data environment, 2) a better understanding of how manuscript description and associated data involving the people and institutions involved in the production, reception, and trade of premodern manuscripts needs to be presented to better facilitate computational research, and 3) an awareness of need to further develop data literacy skills among researchers in order to take full advantage of the wealth of unexplored data now available to them in the Semantic Web.