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 -----Original Message----- From: wikidata-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikidata-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of wikidata-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Saturday, December 27, 2014 7:01 AM To: wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Wikidata-l Digest, Vol 37, Issue 20 Send Wikidata-l mailing list submissions to wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to wikidata-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org You can reach the person managing the list at wikidata-l-ow...@lists.wikimedia.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Wikidata-l digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Use cases for Wikidata in research contexts (Daniel Mietchen) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 18:43:06 +0100 From: Daniel Mietchen <daniel.mietc...@googlemail.com> To: "Discussion list for the Wikidata project." <wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org> Subject: [Wikidata-l] Use cases for Wikidata in research contexts Message-ID: <can6n2b0j6lyot4dgrjexrbq_eodkvw1nshkpxqkspapi94z...@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 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-daniel/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Daniel_Mietchen/Publications http://okfn.org http://wikimedia.org ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l End of Wikidata-l Digest, Vol 37, Issue 20 ****************************************** _______________________________________________ Wikidata-l mailing list Wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l
