Drew Armstrong: Itinera arose because of limitations in print sources for research, teaching, extensibility. Computers are bad about dealing with images, so we use metadata. Intended to represent networks of people, objects, places, etc. to represent networks of people and artifacts and how they move, tied in to images on site. Priority on images, objects, flora, and who created them: Want to maintain connection to the object, e.g., remain sensitive to the difference between \u201cAthens in year X\u201d and \u201cAthens in year X in this picture.\u201d Itinera deals with representations of real objects, what they meant in their time, and how we represent them in our time. Very complicated \u201cThis is what the post-tenure period should be for.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alison: Itinera doubles as a classroom, so that students can learn to work with sources (e.g., \u201cthese sources disagree; now what do I do?\u201d) and create content. \u201cTour stops\u201d on the site are not real\u2014but generated by the software:\u00a0 The Grand Tour stands behind some of this, but not all of it. \u201cTour stops\u201d are sometimes \u201clife events\u201d (e.g., \u201cbaptism\u201d). Objects can have life events, too.<\/p>\n
Drew: Three things to plot:<\/p>\n
Change of state or status (of people and physical objects) is a challenge, e.g., someone who becomes a noble but wasn\u2019t born that way (\u201ctime-based change\u201d). Should strength of relationships, or polarity, be represented (and those can change over time)? \u201cFriend of Voltaire\u201d wasn\u2019t always a friend, friendship has gradations, etc.<\/p>\n
At the moment there are no time sliders, but those will be added. For the moment, there are no lines, and only dots, because we don\u2019t know the routes. Each event is just there, but humans are the ones connecting the dots. EX: Cornelis Kruseman: stops on his tour, why was he avoiding most of the Holy Roman Empire\u2014went out of his way to visit one place in it?<\/p>\n
Collective access<\/em>: open-source package underlying Itinera. Mostly collections management system (http:\/\/www.collectiveaccess.org\/<\/a>), popular with museum community, deals with images better than other open-source alternatives (superior to Omeka), supports BRA44 standard relational metadata (e.g., the real Mona Lisa oil on board, the Xray pictures of it, etc.).<\/p>\n Life roles list is currently flat, but controlled vocabulary suffers if the drop-down list gets too long. (We can\u2019t use natural language processing on this, can we? We can do string-matches.)<\/p>\n Example: Ego network of William Kent (D3); double click on a node to make that the new center: Relationships have date ranges; for a node you can retrieve \u201crelated entities\u201d (joins), click on paper-clip icon to retrieve information about the relationship. Paper-clips are \u201cinterstitial cataloging\u201d to retrieve source documentation; documentation strength may be important.<\/p>\n Relationships have date ranges:\u00a0 between Kent and his mom the range is between his birth and her death?<\/p>\n Alison\u2019s interest in learning from this workshop; What should go on these interstitial records?<\/p>\n Relationships are bi-directional and invertible: As they add relationships they indicate who\u2019s connected to whom and how: student of, teacher of acquaintance of, appointed, appointed by, child of, spouse of, etc<\/p>\n Categorizing women is tricky: if we label someone as \u201cwife\u201d, do we have to label all men who were married as \u201chusband\u201d? What if a little-known\/untraced woman is merely labelled \u201chuman being\u201d if she has no occupation on our list?<\/p>\n Changeable data might include religion; legal regime also matters (e.g., women have a different legal status in different places); how do we avoid prejudging how much should be part of the profile of the human individual? There\u2019s a mummy; the person had a tour, but so did the mummy: a change in status over time (!). Are the taxonomies specific to the early modern European world, or are they true in general of humanity?<\/p>\n Q:\u00a0 Will Humboldt\u2019s travels to Latin America be plotted? (Travel seems Euro-centric at this point). Dan Edelstein: Pitch for minimalism: Why have the computer do things that are better done by humans (dealing with scholars and user expertise? Keep the relationship data simple or at a level of generality \u2013just say that people knew each other without taking it further\u2014so the scholar is invited to dig deeper. Do we need to capture everything from Wikipedia here? Aren\u2019t some things better in prose? Do we need to include diverging scholarly opinions (Itinera does)?<\/p>\n Comment from Aaron Brenner: Other projects, too, started out with very precise relationships definitions but backed off to more workable levels of generality. In FOAF, the knows<\/em> spec is very complex; the developers opted for general because finer detail (e.g., is friend of<\/em>) proved too difficult. \u201cThe problems are social, rather than technical.\u201d<\/p>\n Drew: Citing sources is important for scholars (what do we need to know to facilitate an understanding of relationships?). We also envision using this in a classroom as a teaching device: What do we need to know to help us teach?<\/p>\n Q: Think about cost and benefits of minimalism and maximalization in identifier vs. relationship<\/p>\n Alison: Our visualizations SHOW our biases\u2026 we \u201cbake them in.\u201d<\/p>\n (He has discussed much of this already yesterday at another talk at Pitt.) Data: Dealing with lots of ranging occupations. The Stanford team needed a network ontology but had no experience with this: Followed the Getty Thesauri.<\/p>\n Like the Itinera team, they weren\u2019t really sure what to do about the clergy either. They\u2019re reating religion as an occupation, unless it\u2019s a network we\u2019re capturing, like French Protestants (and he knows this is highly problematic).<\/p>\n Basically four columns of occupation data: Knowledge network, social network, professional network, religious network<\/p>\n They can filter out anyone who\u2019s not in the Knowledge network to indicate who isn\u2019t included. The list is extensible: letters, letters_literary, letters_literary_drama\u00a0 with the underscore character _ as hierarchy delimiter<\/p>\n Elisa: likes the extensibility of the Mapping project\u2019s lists: seems like you can easily adapt the project to new research questions. Q: How did you define your networks? What we call it doesn\u2019t matter so much as what people would have recognized in their time.<\/p>\n Ad-hoc additions based on interests \/ needs of people working on a cluster of letters (e.g. Ben Franklin researcher wants \u201cPlanters\u201d to be added, so they added it)<\/p>\n Is there a need to be more consistent with this\u2014how broad or how specific should these categories be?)<\/p>\n Q: Shouldn\u2019t you be using the French words for categories, if you\u2019re prioritizing what people in your network knew? Using the English \u2018equivalents\u201d is problematic. A: Yeah, maybe\u2026<\/p>\n Q:\u00a0 Is this minimalist enough? (A: probably can\u2019t be pared down further)<\/p>\n Q: Hierarchies\u2014when they overlap\u2014Is this a downward branching tree and do the hierarchies split and converge again?<\/p>\n Q: Is this available for undergrad course use? A: Not ready for sharing yet\u2014until article is written\u2026<\/p>\n Q: Re the Mapping Republic of Letters Procope: A metadata schema: Undergrads don\u2019t have a good framework for how to search for things.. do YOUR minimalist categories make it hard for other than a professional to understand how to navigate<\/p>\n (Example: Collector [includes connoisseurs, bibliophiles, art dealers]<\/p>\n Domestic: [includes servants, slaves, stewards, factotum, etc.]<\/p>\n Gardening-farming [includes horticulturalists, agronomists, stock breeders, garden designers, nurserymen, botanists (who might also get placed in the \u201cSciences_Natural\u201d knowledge network]<\/p>\n A: This isn\u2019t so much a search function as a filter. Q: When you\u2019re matching occupations to individuals, is there a way of dealing with contested occupations: (pretensions to being an artist rather than actually an artist] Q\/A re Gens du monde\u00a0 [ebb: didn\u2019t catch]<\/p>\n Q: Is there much discussion of versioning ontologies? Daniel Balderston (www.borges.pitt.edu<\/a>) : I\u2019m worried about the terminology of categories: It\u2019s slippery\/unstable over time.<\/p>\n Dan Shore (6degs-Bacon):\u00a0 Should we have an unbounded hierarchy? Should categories be generalizable? Is it better to have just down-ward branching hierarchies–extensibility at lower ends? \u00a0[Discussion of this to come in workshop groups]<\/p>\n Alison: invitation to post \/publish our notes on her website.<\/p>\n Chris Warren:\u00a0What can you do with Six Degrees?<\/p>\n Practical Example:\u00a0 A scholar has recently learned that Sir Charles Danvers was involved in the Essex Rebellion: we can pull out who\u2019s within two degrees of Sir Charles Danvers. Search for shard networks, find mutual connections between Danvers and the Earl of Essex<\/p>\n They have a slider that sets different thresholds for probability of relationships<\/p>\n Pull up the Virginia Company group: Find Sir John Danvers, who\u2019s also classed as regicide. (He\u2019s bringing out how the network analysis interface highlights overlaps of categories.)<\/p>\n This is prosopographical research\u2014aimed to make really accessible to people from students to advanced scholars (learning AND querying)<\/p>\n What people can contribute: If we know that Sir John Danver and Sir Charles Danvers are brothers, a user can tag this, and then it goes thorugh a process of validation and be posted eventually.<\/p>\n Re Aaron Brenner\u2019s mention of FOAF schema for relationship vocabulary: 6degs used something similar , but are in process of modifying<\/p>\n Overlapping Goals:<\/p>\n 6 Degrees ontology is not adequate to any of these competing\/overlapping pressures but IS responsive to all of them.<\/p>\n Jessica Otis (6degs) : Using current ODNB theme data (Current ODNB Early Modern Themes)\u2014which should make it possible for their network analysis to connect with other information resources.<\/p>\n Practical issue: How do we want to define groups\u2014what rules and restriction? How to organize them as the list grows?<\/p>\n –Gender is treated as a group, so people can study this as social group<\/p>\n –Any conceivable sub-network of English society as a whole<\/p>\n –alphabetize the hierarchies, and<\/p>\n –deal with de-duplication<\/p>\n Categories\u2014neither mutually exclusive nor required<\/p>\n –simply provide scholars shortcuts to make collections of groups that may be of interest<\/p>\n Six overarching groups to organize categories:<\/p>\n These categories make more of a statement about our scholarly interests now\u2026 If there\u2019s an influx of data from musicologists, they may need to add a new group + categories\u2026<\/p>\n Dan Shore:<\/p>\n High-level categories (controlled):<\/p>\n From what position are types maintained and enforced?\u00a0 Standardizing is really problematic b\/c humanities scholarship raises issues with these<\/p>\n Why not use an uncontrolled vocabulary?<\/p>\n An uncontrolled vocabulary would make it hard to do network analysis<\/p>\n Invokes Aristotle: Dispensing with categories dispenses with science.\u00a0 (So, we\u2019re doing Aristotelian work as soon as we aim to produce knowledge by categorization.)<\/p>\n Kinship relations are generalizable across periods, even though what counts as family membership varies over time and cultures. (Cf. Queer theory debate: what counts as family relationship\u2014not necessarily blood, etc)<\/p>\n The Bacon project deals with this by making top-level categories be Controlled, and low-level categories be uncontrolled:<\/p>\n Low-level categories: Uncontrolled (examples):<\/p>\n Aunt\/Uncle of <> Niece Nephew of An entry given a low-level category such as Son of \/ Father of could potentially belong to multiple High-level categories: Family, legal\/commercial, affective, local, intellectual\/educational.<\/p>\n The Bacon team aims to achieve the science of the category and the compromise of the complicating factors of relationships.<\/p>\n Q: What would you do with more standard prosopographical data: location born? Is that a group? Q: What data is separate from your groups? What about dates? Q: Crowd-sourcing aspect: raises quality control questions: What systems do you have in place? Who\u2019s responsible? Potential scaling problem if you\u2019re swamped with lots of data? Q:\u00a0 What about temporal relationships?\u00a0 For how long is a group identification marked for time, even if it can\u2019t be displayed? Closing comments: Crowd-sourcing capacity allows for debate over relationships: Users can challenge a group identification\u2014and preserve a record of the scholarly debate on the site<\/p>\n Very conscious of the idea that we\u2019re mapping scholarly knowledge, not actuality!<\/p>\n Mark: Our metadata is the interface. Mark is metadata coordinator at Yale, and is collaborating with Susan in similar position at Harvard<\/p>\n MOB:ID: a controlled vocatulary describing relationships among persons an dresources connected with 18th<\/sup>-c. lexicographer Samuel Johnson<\/p>\n Project tile draws from definitions in Johnson\u2019s Dictionary (1763: using Dr. Johnon\u2019s defintions of relationship and network rather than FOAF\u2019s)<\/p>\n MOB:ID builds on a past project: EAC-CPF to Reconnect Samuel Johnson: Started with 78 carefully researched and encoded records: Beinecke and Houghton librarians describe the resources: <identity> keeps track of name variations and entity type. 78 records, 79 identities\u2014re King George III<\/p>\n <description>narrative description, timeline. Nice if we can map our places and times. Occupations (231 occcupations, 95 are distinct. Occuapations taken from ___? source<\/p>\n <relations> relations between people, corporate body, family.\u00a0 And between resource and the entity<\/p>\n Susan speaks on the development of their vocabulary:<\/p>\n In the past year, January \u2013 March 2014: hired 3-month assistant, survey ontologies, analyzed all the relations in the 78 EAC-CPF records\u2026created draft vocab \u2026 documented EVERY decision. (so this is all new.)<\/p>\n Syntax: Looked at models; FOAF, AgRelOn, RELATIONSHIP<\/p>\n Debated verb vs. noun constructions\u2014chose clarity over consistency<\/p>\n collaboratesWith Debates over clarity vs. consistency: clarity wins out<\/p>\n Struggled with verb tesnes: used present tense except for description of single events;<\/p>\n apprenticeOf\/hasApprentice<\/p>\n BUT<\/p>\n appointedBy\/appointerOf<\/p>\n Indirect creative relationships: example printedBy\/printerOfSemantics debates: Historical\u00a0 context vs. possible broader application:<\/p>\n Patron, mentor, prot\u00e9g\u00e9, champion. Kept only those that applied to our 78 entities with the 18th<\/sup>-c. meaning:<\/p>\n mentorOf \/hasMentor Multi-faceted relationship: technical roadblock: EAC-CPF only allows one relationType for each cpfRelation, so they\u2019d need to choose which matters most. Decision for MOB:ID (to build flexibility that was missing in EAC-CPF): to repeat the cpfRelation, but describe it in slightly varying relationship terms. Examples:<\/p>\n James Boswell to Johnson: friendOf, writesAbout<\/p>\n David Garrick to Johnson:\u00a0 studentOf, friendOF<\/p>\n This expands their relationship data considerably. Also allows for expression of antagonistic facets: foeOf and friendOf (during times of rift)<\/p>\n Not all relationships are mutual, for example: non-contemporaneous relationships: Is there a relationship between 20th<\/sup>-c scholars and Johnson or Boswell? Or just a mutual asynchronous connection to the resources? They settled on uni-directional relationships: e.g. collectors Donald and Mary Hyde have a relationship to Johnson but there is no reciprocal link.<\/p>\n Resource Relationships hierarchy:<\/p>\n creatorOf (etc\u2026)<\/p>\n Challenges: How to categorize Johnson\u2019s cat, Hodge? Are pets owned or cohabitants? How about emancipated slaves (and, for that matter, is slavery and personal or a professional relationship)?<\/p>\n Example: Francis Barber was a slave when he first entered Johnson\u2019s service\u2014though owned and lateer freed: How to describe his relationship? Is it personal or professional in relationship kind?<\/p>\n Next steps:<\/strong> It\u2019s not published yet: Publish the vocabulary in RDF form. Interested in cross-walking MOB:ID to gexf, an interchangeable graph representation.<\/p>\n Relevant Resources: Their starting point (EAC-CPF): http:\/\/www2.archivists.org\/groups\/technical-subcommittee-on-eac-cpf\/encoded-archival-context-corporate-bodies-persons-and-families-eac-cpf<\/a><\/p>\n Project links: Connecting the Dots: Using EAC-CPF to Reunite Samuel Johnson and His Circle: http:\/\/wiki.harvard.edu\/confluence\/display\/connectingdots\/<\/a><\/p>\nQ&A<\/h3>\n
\nA: the issue is our data set isn\u2019t complete\u2026 they could plot globally and not just Europe, but at the end of the day the ontology system should be able to accommodate.<\/p>\nCase Study 2: Mapping the Republic of Letters (Dan Edelstein)<\/h3>\n
Q&A<\/h3>\n
\nAlison:\u00a0 The problem with this is cataloging: Library of Congress starter subject headings are constricting: How efficiently can we *search* is the real issue.<\/p>\n
\nEdelstein A: seeking categories that people would have recognized at the time as network. Categories are based on how they would have been perceived at the time.<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nA (Alison): This is search vs. browse<\/p>\n
\nA: Their categories are based on the social perspective of the time\u2014if their community thought of them as an artist, then they turn up as an artist. .
\nFollowup Q: What about people who weren\u2019t KNOWN as artists in their time b\/c they\u2019re reclusive? Do we exclude this?
\nElisa: Suggestion: maybe we make a decision at this point: Decide whether we only ever represent how people were known at a specific moment. Don\u2019t allow mixing of what\u2019s understood in our time vs. what was understood then.<\/p>\n
\nA: Maybe after this workshop, there will be!<\/p>\nCase Study 3: Six Degrees of Francis Bacon<\/h3>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n–groups like Dissenters\u2014these people would not necessarily have known each other. They\u2019re affiliated by group identity<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n
\n
\n
\nApprentice of<>Master of
\nMentor<> Mentee of
\n\u2026<\/p>\nQ&A<\/h3>\n
\nA: Groups are properties of a node.<\/p>\n
\nA (Jessica): They have titles, names, date of birth\/death, historical significance\u2026 This stuff isn\u2019t group data, but info on each node. All hard-coded into the node separate from the groups.<\/p>\n
\nA: Admin approval is required for just about anything brought in by crowd-sourcing.
\nDecision to make contributions to the project be open to the public (not just universities)
\nAlso, a set of user-tiers:
\n1) ordinary user (just prove you are a person)
\n2) curators (people accepted to know what they\u2019re doing
\n3) Admins (Jessica, Chirs, , etc<\/p>\n
\nA: That\u2019s something we\u2019ve programmed in capacity for, though not yet functional on the site. Hope it\u2019s functional by spring when 6degs goes live!<\/p>\nCase Study 4:\u00a0Manner of Belonging: Interstitial Description of Dr. Johnson\u2019s Circle (MOB:ID)<\/h3>\n
\n<eac-cpf>\u00a0 a standard for corporate and family names\u2026idea has been around since 1980s<\/p>\n
\n<eac-cpf>
\n<control>
\n<cpfDescription><\/p>\n
\nfriendOf
\nmemberOf\/hasMember<\/p>\n
\npatronOf\/hasPatron<\/p>\n
\nauthorOf
\nartistOf
\ncreatorofPart
\ncollectorOf
\nsubjectOf
\nmentionedIn<\/p>\n
\nDecision: (entityType=person) is linked to other entities with term \u201ccohabiteeOf\u201d (as opposed to ownership!) [ebb sidenote: The Digital Mitford project made a similar decision to include named pets on its historical persons list.]<\/p>\n