LP11 reports

Minutes of October 30 People WG meeting

Group 1: conceptual aligning of sample data

• Talked about why we are doing this
  • Possibilities for aligning and reconciling prosopographies and people data sets, even when they will have no overlapping people
• Started looking at Aeschylus in four library data sets; only looked at one BNF
• Possibilities for the next meeting
  • Descriptions of data sets and explanations of acronyms
  • Time set aside at the beginning to discuss goals
  • Data in github not all presented in the same way; some hard (for Emily at least) to search through (for example, the BNF data https://github.com/DigiClass/LOD-People/tree/main/sample-data/BNF ), so maybe it would be helpful to find specific records ahead of time (such as records for Aeschylus in library catalogs) to save time during meeting?
    • Aeschylus record IDREF: https://github.com/DigiClass/LOD-People/blob/main/sample-data/IdRef/086453033.rdf
    • Aeschylus record GND: https://github.com/DigiClass/LOD-People/blob/main/sample-data/GND/118500856.rdf
    • Camillo noted that in GND URIs (to other GND entries) are used more frequently than some other databases which use only strings, although strings are also possible in GND

Group 2: hands-on transformation of data

• Nurdan starts working on transforming non-rdf data into rdf using OpenRefine
  • Need to share skill package for those not very familiar with RDF technical skills
• Akihiro works on transforming XML-RDF into Wikidata
  • (Many of the insights below are from Camillo—thank you!)
  • Repository: https://github.com/DigiClass/LOD-People/tree/main/sample-data/BNF
  • Example file: https://github.com/DigiClass/LOD-People/blob/main/sample-data/BNF/cb180398279.rdfn3
  • Metadata about editing activities, such as dcterms:created "2022-10-12" and dcterms:modified "2022-10-19", are surfaced in the Revision history of Wikidata items and are not user-controllable. Therefore, we ignore this kind of data.
  • skos:prefLabel → Label
    • (Note the naming convention: in Wikidata we must omit parenthetical qualifiers like “(15..–1581?)”.)
  • skos:altLabel → Also known as
  • Vocabulary from https://www.rdaregistry.info/Elements/a/ is used primarily.
    • rdaa:P50097 has country associated with person
    • This is broader than country of citizenship (P27). However, its superproperty country (P17) has a conflicts-with constraint for human, so besides the different intension of the property, the extension (what values are actually used) also differs. In BnF data, values are limited to contemporary “countries”.
    • rdaa:P50098 has period of activity of person → corresponds to period of activity (P1317) in Wikidata. If you need separate boundaries, you can use work period (start) (P2031) and work period (end) (P2032).
  • References:
    • https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Help:Dates
    • https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Biography/Model
    • https://www.rdaregistry.info/Maps/ (Shall we map rdaa to wdp ?)
• Jun
  • Start working on MANTO csv data, transforming into Turtle RDF data
  • Vocabularies should be used for creating RDF are controversial
    • MANTO doesn’t provide ‘formal’ properties
    • Align to Wikidata?
      • Conceptual gap between MANTO and wikidata
    • Define original properties following manto vocabularies?
• Outputs (possible options)
  • Upload newly created data to the GitHub Repository (for each dataset)
  • Upload to light-weight, free, open-source triple store (e.g. Dydra)
    • Experimenting queries and see how data works
• Possibilities for the next meeting
  • Prepare guidelines for:
    • Basic skill sets recommended to participate
    • Lists of basic concepts in Wikidata (for Wikidata transformation)

LP11 meetings, December 1st-4th 2025

Comparison of Aeschylus record between two RDF datasets (IDREF) and (GND) with Wikidata record (compiled by Gabriel Bodard, Jun Ogawa and Burcun Aksahin):

IDREF	GND	Wikidata
document URI	document URI
creation metadata	creation metadata	Page history?
notes
person URI	person URI	person URI
alt identifiers	alt identifiers	alt identifiers
gender	gender	sex or gender
pref label
alt label	personal name/variant names	(sometimes in "also known as")
name(s)		Names (by language)
		also known as
		Abbreviation entry
event --> birth date	birth date	date of birth
		place of birth
event --> death date (typo!)	death date	date of death
		place of death
		manner of death
	Associated date (century)	time period
"citizenship" (Hellenic republic!)	place	citizenship (Classical Athens) (+ deme)
language	language	language (spoken/written)
occupation (note) (tragicus)	subject code (history of literature),	Description (by language)
	profession/occupation	occupation
		genre
		event (conflicts)
Bibliographic citations (Works about or by)	Publications (by)	Notable works (by)
		Described by source
	Relationships (family, editors)	Relationships (family)
		Image
		Depicted by
		Different from