Eero Hyvönen, Jouni Tuominen, Heikki Rantala, Petri Leskinen, Rafael Leal, Annastiina Ahola
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General motivation for the tutorial
To facilitate Digital Humanities (DH) research, following basic tasks need to be done: 1) Transforming, harmonizing, and aggregating Cultural Heritage (CH) data into a form suitable for research. 2) Publishing the data with APIs for research and applications. 3) Provision of tools and applications for DH analyses.
Semantic web technologies and Linked Open Data (LOD) provide a promising approach and tools for these tasks. A proof of concept of this is the “Sampo series” of over 20 Linked Open Data services of CH data with semantic portals on top them that are in use in Finland (Hyvönen, 2023). These systems are used by both DH researchers and the general public with up to over million end users in some Sampos. Semantic web technologies can in many cases be used with little experience in computer science but are still not so well known and utilized by DH researchers, although more and more LOD datasets are readily available on the Web. This tutorial is targeted to mitigate this challenge.
Learning objectives/outcomes
Since 2002, the Semantic Computing Research Group (SeCo) in the Aalto University and University of Helsinki has been involved in 1) developing a national semantic web infrastructure and 2) the Sampo series of Linked Open Data (LOD) services and semantic portals. This work goes on today as part of the national Finnish DARIAH-FI research infrastructure program, in relation to Aalto University’s collaborations with DARIAH-EU. Based on lessons learned during this work, the goal of this tutorial is to explain in practice how the standards, models, tools, datasets, and portals developed can be re-used for creating new LOD services and applications for DH, based on one’s own data available in different formats.
Format
Presentations and demonstrations. Advise for hands-on experiments.
Target audience
DH researchers with computation interests. No specific skills required.
Anticipated number of participants
Could be of interest to a wider audience.
About the Organizers
Eero Hyvönen (https://seco.cs.aalto.fi/u/eahyvone/) is professor of semantic media technology at the Aalto University, Department of Computer Science, and director of Helsinki Centre for Digital Humanities (HELDIG) at the University of Helsinki. His research has focused since 2001 on Semantic Web and Linked (Open) Data technologies, developing with his Semantic Computing Research Group (SeCo) (https://seco.cs.aalto.fi/) the national semantic web infrastructure in Finland (https://seco.cs.aalto.fi/projects/lodi4dh/) and its applications in different areas, especially in Cultural Heritage and for Digital Humanities research (https://seco.cs.aalto.fi/applications/sampo/). Eero Hyvönen has published over 500 research articles and books and got several international and national awards.
Jouni Tuominen (https://seco.cs.aalto.fi/u/jwtuomin/) is a university researcher at the University of Helsinki, Helsinki Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities (HSSH), and a visiting researcher at Aalto University, Department of Computer Science, and affiliated with the Helsinki Centre for Digital Humanities (HELDIG). He received his D.Sc. (Tech.) at Aalto University in 2017, with a dissertation titled “Ontology Services for Knowledge Organization Systems”. His research interests include ontology repositories and services, linked data publishing methods, ontology models for legacy data, and tooling for digital humanities. He has published over 130 research publications since 2007, and has received several national and international awards. He has collaborated with museums, libraries, and archives on their collection cataloging and cultural heritage data publishing processes since 2007.
Annastiina Ahola is a doctoral researcher in the Semantic Computing Research Group (SeCo) at Aalto University. Her research focuses on utilizing Semantic Web technologies and Linked Data for developing methods, tools and applications in the field of Digital Humanities research. Her recent work has been on the Sampo series of Semantic Portals (https://seco.cs.aalto.fi/applications/sampo/) for visual, literary and performing arts: ArtSampo, BookSampo and OperaSampo.
Bibliography
Following articles overview our research and lessons learned regarding 1) the national LOD infrastructure, 2) Sampo series of LOD services and semantic portals, and 3) the vision of using the Semantic Web for DH research towards knowledge discovery and Artificial Intelligence-based systems:
Eero Hyvönen: How to Create a National Cross-domain Ontology and Linked Data Infrastructure and Use It on the Semantic Web. Semantic Web, in press, 2024. DOI: 10.3233/SW-243468.
Eero Hyvönen: Digital Humanities on the Semantic Web: Sampo Model and Portal Series. Semantic Web, vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 729-744, 2023.
Eero Hyvönen: Using the Semantic Web in Digital Humanities: Shift from Data Publishing to Data-analysis and Serendipitous Knowledge Discovery. Semantic Web, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 187-193, 2020.
Linked Open Data for Digital Humanities Research and Applications
Related to using Linked Open Data in Digital Humanities, the DHNB2025 workshop program includes two complementary independent tutorials that can be attended in sequel or separately. The first tutorial focuses on Linked Open Data production and Wikidata using the OpenRefine tool with hands-on exercises. The latter tutorial in the afternoon explains how to create a Linked Open Data service for ones’s own data and use it in Digital Humanities research and application development.