Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
using the SPARQL language and protocol. VQB allows to visually create queries to the
stored knowledge base and supports domain experts with an intuitive visual representa-
tion of query and data. Developed queries can be stored and added via drag-and-drop to
the current query. This enables the reuse of existing queries as building blocks for more
complex ones.
4.7
Applications
Catalogous Professorum.
The World Wide Web, as an ubiquitous medium for pub-
lication and exchange, already significantly influenced the way historians work: the
online availability of catalogs and bibliographies allows to e
ciently search for content
relevant for a certain investigation; the increasing digitization of works from histori-
cal archives and libraries, in addition, enables historians to directly access historical
sources remotely. The capabilities of the Web as a medium for collaboration, however,
are only starting to be explored. Many, historical questions can only be answered by
combining information from di
erent researchers and organiza-
tions. Also, after original sources are analyzed, the derived information is often much
richer, than can be captured by simple keyword indexing. These factors pave the way for
the successful application of knowledge engineering techniques in historical research
communities.
In [131] we report about the application of an adaptive, semantics-based knowl-
edge engineering approach using OntoWiki for the development of a prosopographical
knowledge base. In prosopographical research, historians analyze common character-
istics of historical groups by studying statistically relevant quantities of individual bi-
ographies. Untraceable periods of biographies can be determined on the basis of such
accomplished analyses in combination with statistically examinations as well as pat-
terns of relationships between individuals and their activities.
In our case, researchers from the historical seminar at Universität Leipzig aimed
at creating a prosopographical knowledge base about the life and work of professors
in the 600 years history of Universität Leipzig ranging from the year 1409 till 2009
-the
Catalogus Professorum Lipsiensis
(CPL). In order to enable historians to collect,
structure and publish this prosopographical knowledge an ontological knowledge model
was developed and incrementally refined over a period of three years. The community
of historians working on the project was enabled to add information to the knowledge
base using an adapted version of OntoWiki. For the general public, a simplified user
interface
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is dynamically generated based on the content of the knowledge base. For
access and exploration of the knowledge base by other historians a number of access
interfaces was developed and deployed, such as a graphical SPARQL query builder, a
relationship finder and plain RDF and Linked Data interfaces. As a result, a group of
10 historians supported by a much larger group of volunteers and external contributors
collected information about 1,300 professors, 10,000 associated periods of life, 400
institutions and many more related entities.
The benefits of the developed knowledge engineering platform for historians are
twofold: Firstly, the collaboration between the participating historians has significantly
ff
erent sources, from di
ff
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