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UID:pretalx-spathum24-PG9QDP@pretalx.com
DTSTART;TZID=CET:20240926T143000
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DESCRIPTION:Introduction\nSpatial humanists have long recognized the enormo
 us integrative potential of using places as common points of reference for
  heterogeneous information. To realize that potential\, collections of nam
 ed places must be abundant\, diverse\, collectively assembled\, and histor
 ically deep. In 2017\, the World Historical Gazetteer (WHG) project based 
 at the University of Pittsburgh undertook to build a freely available web 
 platform (https://whgazetteer.org ) that would facilitate the collaborativ
 e development of such a collection\, and to provide multiple ways of acces
 sing its continuously growing results. The WHG platform has experiences st
 eady growth in content\, features\, and usage since its 2019 launch.\nThe 
 approach taken by the WHG project for assembling\, linking\, and publishin
 g diverse place data as a free web resource utilizes the technological and
  social elements of the Linked Data paradigm (LD)\, as its characteristics
  match the requirements of a comprehensive digital historical gazetteer we
 ll. These include (i) extensibility\, due to its underlying graph-based co
 nceptual model\; (ii) multivocality\, by accommodating multiple possibly c
 onflicting statements about the same phenomena\; (iii) integration and (iv
 ) sustainability--both facilitated by an expressive standard interchange f
 ormat expressed in RDF.\nThe WHG union index has grown to well over 2 mill
 ion sets of attestations for the same (or closely matched) place from mult
 iple sources. A number of datasets are published in the WHG but not yet ad
 ded to the index\, and many more are at an earlier stage of accessioning. 
 The WHG is in fact collectively assembled\, and well on its way to being a
 bundant\, diverse\, and historically deep.\nA different kind of gazetteer\
 nThe WHG is not so much a gazetteer as it is a collection of gazetteers\, 
 generically termed place datasets in the platform. The records from datase
 ts published in the WHG are to a large extent internally linked by their c
 reators in its union index\, and accessed via faceted search and an applic
 ation programming Interface (API). Individual datasets are also presented 
 as publications within the system and can be browsed and queried as such. 
 The WHG platform provides features for performing the linking of data and 
 disseminating the results as truly "linked open usable data" as described 
 in Sanderson (2020).\nThe lure and promise\nKnowledge about the past deriv
 ed from research outputs\, archives\, and library holdings can be brought 
 together indirectly with linked data methodology by common references to p
 laces. In Figure 1\, each project (clear circle) has some information pert
 aining to Tbilisi\, concerning perhaps museum holdings or historical event
 s. Each project has within its research output a listing of all the places
  its work references--including Tbilisi. For each place they have identifi
 ed one or more identifiers from an "authority" resource such as Getty Thes
 aurus of Geographic Names (TGN)\, Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BnF)\
 , GeoNames\, or Wikidata (green circle). By publishing their place records
  in the WHG\, projects are in effect announcing "we have information about
  {x} and Tbilisi." A search for "Tbilisi" -- or any of the 70 name variant
 s gathered from linked records -- will currently return a set of 7 attesta
 tions\, each from a different source.\nMultivocality. Linked Data methodol
 ogies facilitate the surfacing of suppressed place names and difficult his
 tories by supporting peoples’ discoveries about past places. It can allo
 w genealogists and others to discover common historical connections to pla
 ces\, even if ancestors had different experiences at them and may have cal
 led them by different names. A visitor to the WHG who searches for Ayers R
 ock finds information about Uluru. A search for Tenochtitlan returns Mexic
 o City and Ciudad de México (and vice versa)\, and a search for Batavia i
 ncludes links to Jakarta. \nTeaching. An index of linked gazetteers is a p
 owerful teaching tool. By exploring how the same name recurs across the gl
 obe\, students can trace contours of immigration and conquest. The WHG Pla
 ce Collection and Collection Group features support classroom exercises fo
 r creating and annotating collections of thematically linked places.\nThe 
 limits\nSparse temporal information. Relatively few historical place attes
 tations include timespans indicating a period of existence\; publication y
 ear of the source is often all that is available. For this reason\, it is 
 not possible to get comprehensive results when filtering on a year\, times
 pan\, or period.\nLD is (often) not curated. A stated premise of the origi
 nal RDF model design was that "anyone can say anything about anything" (W3
 C 2002). This is a blessing and a curse: it affords essential multivocalit
 y\, but the quality of an information resource can suffer\, and contributo
 rs to an LD graph have no control over who says what about their statement
 s.\nDisambiguation and conflation. The requirement for one record per plac
 e is a burden for many potential collaborators. Places can have multiple n
 ames\, types\, extents/locations and relationships over time. Aggregating 
 these attributes within a single record can be difficult.\nSemantics. Ther
 e is little agreement as to some essential categorizations\, e.g. of place
  type. The WHG allows any term to be added for type\, but because mapping 
 distinctive terms to the common vocabulary we offer can be difficult\, the
  quality of reconciliation results and place type search filtering are som
 ewhat hampered.\nLooking Forward\nHistorian Jo Guldi recently asked how to
  take a digital\, quantitative approach to history that still maintains th
 e complexity of past human experience and the heterogenous\, ambiguous\, a
 nd ideologically embedded sources in which it is represented (Guldi 2023).
  Geographer Ruth Wilson Gilmore argues that struggles for racial justice a
 re always also struggles for place (Gilmore 2022). Linking multiple digita
 l humanities projects together is on its face a worthwhile goal\, but ther
 e is still work to be done to determine how best and most ethically to do 
 that while honoring the fact that each project has its own unique and orga
 nic relationship with a data-sharing community\, one that may be vulnerabl
 e and may have a history of exploitation (Smith 1999). This is a complex p
 ractical and epistemological challenge\, one that linked data makes both e
 asier and more complex in various ways\, and with which the WHG continues 
 to wrestle.
DTSTAMP:20260411T015603Z
LOCATION:MG2 01.10
SUMMARY:The Lure and Limits of Linked Data: the case of World Historical Ga
 zetteer - Karl Grossner\, Ruth Mostern
URL:https://pretalx.com/spathum24/talk/PG9QDP/
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