| Title | The curious identity of Michael Field and its implications for humanities research with the semantic web |
| Publication Type | Conference Paper |
| Authors | Brown, S., and J. Simpson |
| Abstract | This paper uses the case of author Michael Field, the shared writing identity of two late Victorian women, to consider the implications of embracing the semantic web for humanities research. It is argued that the ontologies prevalent today reveal a lack of nuance when it comes to the complex relationships that are the focus of much humanities research, such as the connection of names to persons, particularly with respect to authorship. Further, the current state of ontology use aside, even the sophisticated use of OWL, SKOS, or ontology alignment techniques for linking big semantic web collections stands to hinder humanities research by hiding rather than exposing difference. We use the outlier Michael Field to highlight what much of the valuable work of the humanities is about and in doing so bring to the fore the challenge of formalizing complex social meanings that can otherwise be overlooked or dismissed as a trivial technicality. As a solution the humanities community is encouraged to begin engaging more directly in the construction of semantic web tools and infrastructure. |
| Notes | '\"little semantics\" and data aggregation obscures difference\n \ngreat example about women\'s last names\n \n\n\n\nIf we are really interested in making the semantic web a tool which will allow us to see interesting things that we could not perceive otherwise, then we need to recognize that limiting the complexity of vocabularies and ontologies so that we can easily collect as much information as possible together will not achieve this end. \nWhat the humanities community needs to be doing on a larger scale is the following: \n\n\n1) Constructing more custom ontologies directed at cap- turing humanities-relevant information rather than adopting those built by other communities for other purposes; \n\n\n2) Pursuing the ontology integration techniques already developed to address the challenges of integration, despite their complexity and the real possibility that they will not work; \n\n\n3) Designing inference engines specifically for humani- ties research. \n\n\n\n\n - poiril' |
| DOI | 10.1109/BigData.2013.6691674 |