Comments on: Standards

By: Liste non exhaustive des thématiques abordées lors des THATCamp | ThatCamp Paris 2010

Tue, 04 May 2010 07:52:57 +0000

[…] thatcamp.org/2009/standards/ Sur les standars […]

By: Musebrarian

Musebrarian — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:08:25 +0000

Arden,

It has mostly been used for European projects – probably the best place to find some examples is via their References page: cidoc.ics.forth.gr/references.html

The problem is that CIDOC CRM is a higher level model that you would use as a guide for developing a local information model, not necessarily by directly applying it the way you would the Dublin Core. By basing your local model on CRM you can enable your data to be exchanged with others who have developed their own local information structure.

There are also some broader examples of how the CIDOC CRM is being used on the Semantic Museum (SeMuse) wiki www.semuse.org

While the CRM can be somewhat impenetrable to uninitiated, it may be useful for emerging humanities semantic web approaches to use as a guide to modeling certain kinds of problems (e.g. historical events).

CRM also has its share of critics who think it is too complex (and one of the reasons it hasn’t been as widely adopted as other approaches). It does fall on the ‘neat’ side of the neat vs. scruffie divide (is.gd/14Aeg) and may not suit everyone’s taste.

By: Arden Kirkland

Arden Kirkland — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:01:14 +0000

I definitely share your interest and concern with standards and controlled vocabularies and their potential to exclude alternative interpretations (I just commented on this in reply to one of Sterling Fluharty’s posts). I work with historic clothing, which is indeed idiosyncratic and therefore challenging, and has not been well served by existing structural models.

Douglas Knox – I appreciate your thoughts on this tension. I think we need to carefully consider our intended outcome, and whether some aspects of the semantic web will help or hinder. I’d love to learn more about “linked data.”

Musebrarian – the CDOC CRM seems interesting – do you know of any good examples of it in action? I don’t quite understand how it works.

By: THATCamp » Blog Archive

THATCamp » Blog Archive — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 22:48:19 +0000

[…] tools than I have. In some ways, my interests resonate with Robert Nelson’s post on standards, since I’m also thinking about what to do when the objects of humanistic study (in this case, […]

By: Musebrarian

Musebrarian — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 01:41:32 +0000

I’m familiar with the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (cidoc.ics.forth.gr/) designed for cultural heritage objects that includes a model of historical events. The full model may be more than is needed, but the CIDOC CRM has also generated a fair number of papers about its modeling choices (and potential pitfalls for other modelers of historic events).

By: Douglas Knox

Douglas Knox — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 04:55:59 +0000

Definitely worth discussing. I’ve been thinking for a while that there is an opportunity for history, especially, to be in productive tension with the vision of semantic web. Though I am quite interested to see semantic web ideas explored and developed (and I have a lot to learn about them), some of the more giddy early promises of what might be done with semantic web technology strike me as naive about history and its intellectual problems. “Linked data” is a useful compromise that puts the focus on good, web-savvy information engineering to support the activity of finding relevant information, in the way that library standards do — standards remain very useful in that way. But it seems like the semantic web wants to offer to outsource a layer or two of inferencing, and to do that well will require much more than standardized event models, controlled vocabularies, and taxonomies. It will require formalizing a “logic of history,” if not in the sense of a grand metanarrative, then as a formalization of the implicit modes of thought practiced by historians and others in historical disciplines. I think we can learn a lot from John Unsworth’s argument that markup is valuable because it “externalizes interpretation.” Even when the attempt at formalization fails, we can learn something. (www3.isrl.illinois.edu/~unsworth/newberry.04.html)

What would it mean to have a discussion of something like the [Temporal Modeling] of the English Working Class, for example? Date values and event models alone won’t get us very far in framing a good question. The semantic web offers to reify anything as a subject for assertions, but the interesting assertions in history are about change and becoming. Date values are relatively easy, and that data certainly can be useful, but it can be more interesting to historical humanities to see how time wears away at the predicates and values that purport to be fixed. Taxonomic categories themselves have histories, and will generate histories. The semantic web will sooner or later have to confront this problem in its own way. History could have something to contribute as a source of prior thinking and a site of interestingly hard challenges.

By: Ryan Shaw

Ryan Shaw — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 04:09:35 +0000

Robert, you raise some interesting questions regarding the formal modeling of historical events. These are precisely the kinds of questions I’m attempting to address in my PhD dissertation. I’m looking at the notion of “historical event directories” that would provide a service for time analogous to the service place name gazetteers provide for space. I’ve found that a naive conception of historical events as objectively existing phenomena localized in time and space provides a poor grounding for such a service. Fortunately work in critical philosophy of historiography that provides some alternative conceptions that seem more promising. I really wish I could be at THATCamp to discuss this with you and others; unfortunately my dissertation plus a new baby made it impossible this year.

Incidentally, is there any record of the panel you mentioned on “Time” at last year’s THATCamp?