Rome Wasn't Digitized in a Day - Council on Library and Information ...

111
are no established standards for “mix<strong>in</strong>g scripts <strong>in</strong> a regular search<strong>in</strong>g pattern” (Álvarez et al. 2010).
One of the largest problems with current databases, however, accord<strong>in</strong>g to these authors, is that
although relational databases allow l<strong>in</strong>k<strong>in</strong>g of data <strong>in</strong> different tables to <strong>in</strong>dicate relationships, key
entities <strong>in</strong> different <strong>in</strong>scriptions, such as personal and place names, are typically not normalized. As a
solution to this problem and others, Álvarez et al. proposed the creation of an ontological schema
based on EpiDoc. “Develop<strong>in</strong>g an ontological schema that allows for more normalized <strong>in</strong>formation
structure,” Álvarez et al argued, “has the added benefit of prepar<strong>in</strong>g epigraphic data to be shared on the
Web via l<strong>in</strong>ked data, which opens new possibilities to relat<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong>formation currently dispersed <strong>in</strong>
several databases.”
After mapp<strong>in</strong>g the EpiDoc schema to an “ontological representation expressed <strong>in</strong> the W3C OWL 363
language,” Álvarez et al. provided an example of how a sample <strong>in</strong>scription encoded <strong>in</strong> EpiDoc XML
would appear as represented by their ontology. One important advantage of an ontological
representation for <strong>in</strong>scriptions that Álvarez et al. listed was the possibility of mapp<strong>in</strong>g the discrete
<strong>in</strong>formation units found with<strong>in</strong> <strong>in</strong>scriptions to other knowledge organization systems (e.g., mapp<strong>in</strong>g
terms for civilization eras to the Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus 364 ). Not<strong>in</strong>g that EpiDoc also
made use of some controlled vocabularies, such as one that describes monuments and objects that bear
texts, 365 Álvarez et al. translated a number of these vocabularies <strong>in</strong>to separate ontology modules that
can also be reused separately. Another advantage of us<strong>in</strong>g an ontology for <strong>in</strong>scriptions with both a
series of properties and <strong>in</strong>ference rules is that far more precise search<strong>in</strong>g of <strong>in</strong>scriptions can be
conducted, such as far more complex named-entity search<strong>in</strong>g (e.g., all parts of the “tria nom<strong>in</strong>a” [the
praenomen, cognomen, and nomen] are encoded as separate data types associated to an <strong>in</strong>scription as
well as filiation).
The OWL representation designed by Álvarez et al. avoided the use of free text str<strong>in</strong>gs whenever
possible, and <strong>in</strong>stead treated all <strong>in</strong>formation as either properties or classes, and all ontology elements <strong>in</strong>
this representation are identified by the URI of the element (class, property, or data) that is referenced
when connect<strong>in</strong>g entries. They designed their implementation <strong>in</strong> this manner to support the exportation
of epigraphic-l<strong>in</strong>ked data by other applications, or essentially to create mach<strong>in</strong>e-actionable data:
This idea br<strong>in</strong>gs a new dimension to the shar<strong>in</strong>g of epigraphic <strong>in</strong>formation, allow<strong>in</strong>g for
software agents to consume RDF <strong>in</strong>formation for specific purposes, complement<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong>terfaces
oriented to use by humans. Each of their elements described <strong>in</strong> the previous section will be
referenced by a unique address, a URI that enables an unambiguous, consistent, and permanent
identification for <strong>in</strong>scriptions and all their associated <strong>in</strong>formation items. In our approach,
<strong>in</strong>formation is already stored <strong>in</strong> OWL-RDF so that the ma<strong>in</strong> additional requirements are hav<strong>in</strong>g
a consistent URI design for the <strong>in</strong>formation items and deploy<strong>in</strong>g the provid<strong>in</strong>g services
(Álvarez et al. 2010).
One important use of URIs, Álvarez et al. noted, is that they could be used to l<strong>in</strong>k records for the same
<strong>in</strong>scription found <strong>in</strong> different databases. While most epigraphical catalogs assign objects various codes
depend<strong>in</strong>g on the organization system, as well as often use standard reference identifiers (e.g., CIL #),
Álvarez et al. po<strong>in</strong>ted out that by us<strong>in</strong>g a l<strong>in</strong>ked-data approach, the suffix of a URI could be changed
depend<strong>in</strong>g on the reference number, and the use of RDF triples and the predicate rdfs:seeAlso could be
363 The OWL web ontology language has been created by the W3C to support further development of the Semantic Web, and the current recommendation
for OWL 2 can be found at (http://www.w3.org/TR/owl2-overview/)
364 http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabularies/aat/<strong>in</strong>dex.html
365 For example, the “Eagle/EpiDoc Object Type Vocabulary” can be found at http://edh-www.adw.uni-heidelberg.de/EDH/<strong>in</strong>schrift/012116