Note: This document is still a rough draft.
Contents |
Objectives
The HiSTEMM ontology will define explicitly the formal specifications of the classes of terms and concepts used in the history of science domain, together with its properties and relations among them. This ontology will define the structure of the wiki, including the categories of pages that will be present, together with their attributes and relations. Although the ontology will be primarily directed for its application in the semantic wiki, it may also be reused in other contexts where the automatic processing of history of science knowledge will be necessary. The relation between the ontology and the wiki will be a dynamic and bi-directional one, as the growing and development of the latter will also cause the redefinition of the former.
Historical ontologies and related initiatives
We based our work on the following projects and documents:
- The VICODI ontology (2004).
- An European History ontology used to validate this project contextualisation system was developed in the VICODI: Visual Contextualisation of Digital Content, an European project in the 5th FP, Information Society Technologies, RTD project 2002-2004.
- The Current Official Version of the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model: Nick Crofts, Martin Doerr, Tony Gill, Stephen Stead, Matthew Stiff (editors), Definition of the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model, June 2005[1].
- The "CIDOC object-oriented Conceptual Reference Model" (CRM), was developed by the ICOM/CIDOC Documentation Standards Group since September 2000. It constitutes the description of an ontology for cultural heritage information and is an official standard ISO 21127:2006 since 9/12/2006.
- The SWHi Ontology (2006-2008).
- This project is a cooperation between two University of Groningen departments, the Digital Library department of the University Library and the Information Science department. Despite its general and somehow misleading denomination, the SWHi (Semantic Web for History) project is, in the authors own words, "aimed at integrating, combining, and deducing information on the early American history, based on the Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, 1639-1800 collection, to assist general users or historians in exploring American history by using new technology offered by the Semantic Web". More than generally extending the results to distinct historical areas, the authors seem to have the priority to extend it to non historical domains and heterogeneous resources.
- The Text Encoding Initiative TEI Personography Activity, particularly the Report on XML mark-up of biographical and prosopographical data by Eva Wedervang-Jensen and Matthew Driscoll (2006).
- The aim of this report was to compare and evaluate a number of different schemes for marking-up biographical and prosopographical data, including the EAC (Encoded Archival Context), the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model, MODS (Metadata Object Description Schema), METS (Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard), epiDoc (Epigraphic Documents), HEML (The Historical Mark-up and Linking Project), NOMEN, the GENTECH Data Modelling Project's XML implementation gdxml, GEDCOM XML, the HR XML Consortium's PersonName schema, and xNAL (OASIS TC's Name and Address Standard)..
- The HEML. Historical Event Mark-up and Linking Project.
- Papers presented at the Semantic Web for scientific and cultural organisations: results of some early experiments. 16th June - 17th June 2003. Firenze.
- This workshop was organised within the European project MESMUSES – Methaphor for Science Museums (IST-2000-26074) funded by the European Commission inside the Fifth Framework Programme of Research and Technological Development (1998-2002) and aimed at presenting the semantic web methodology applied to the scientific and cultural museology.
- This is an eCONTENTPLUS EC Programme, started Oct 2006, that will certainly be of interest to us. The project aims the creation of a digital European history textbook base by integration of already existing material in the respective countries. This integration will be achieved through language independent metadata schemata based on space (locations), time (dates), and thematic categories, defined by a European thematic multilingual ontology for history.
Ontologies whose namespaces are cited in HiSTEMM
Tools
We use the Protégé ontology editor and knowledge-base framework, for the development of HiSTEMM.
Options
We decided to follow a similar approach to the one taken by the SWHi Ontology, and we based the HiSTEMM ontology on the PROTON (Proto Ontology) and VICODI ontologies. PROTON, as an upper-level ontology could serve as a foundation for our ontology, reducing the margin for conceptual errors and increasing its compatibility with other ontologies, present and future. But we took a less strict approach in regard to PROTON than the SWHi Ontology did. We took as a point of departure the PROTON System and Top modules (and eventualy the PROTON Knowledge Management module). We used very scarcely the PROTON Upper module, and we directly used more parts of the VICODI, CICOC-CRM and other ontologies. Particularly, we turned intensively to the Cyc Foundation's Concept Browser as a source for defining classes in our ontology. The Cyc ontology, containing hundreds of thousands of terms, will remain as a prime source for future developments. The CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model proved to be increasingly important for the the definition of object properties (relations in the Wiki).
Standards
For bibliographic and archival citations, we will follow the Methodology Guidelines of the WHSO-Project World History of Science Online: Databases of Bibliographical and Archival Sources.
Vocabulary
The vocabulary for the wiki instances was obtained from the following main academic sources:
- Isis current bibliography of the history of science and its cultural influences.
- A list of entries in the classification scheme, subjects, personal names, institutions, geographical terms, time periods,technology and culture, forum for the history of science and the history of science journals list, is available at Isis CB History of Science Bibliographic Resources.
- Gillispie, Charles Coulston, ed. Dictionary of Scientific Biography. 18 vols. New York: Scribner/American Council of Learned Societies, 1970-1990.
- A list of entries is available at Entries in the Original DSB.
- Scientific Instrument Commission. Cumulative Bibliography. An online bibliography of the history of scientific instruments maintained by the Scientific Instrument Commission. International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science (IUHPS).
Results
The HiSTEMM ontology is still far from being stable, but we decided to have the most recent version available in the OWL and OWLDoc formats. You may use the OWLDoc to navigate the different classes and properties with your browser. The ontology includes some instances as examples.
The image shows a partial view of the main classes in the HiSTEMM ontology.
