Interactions: Platforms for Working with Linked Data

Following on from a successful

LOD workshop in Montreal
that saw 30 plus people come together and discuss the potential for linked data in the humanities, we propose a workshop that focuses more specifically on interacting with Linked Data. There are many different platforms for working with linked data
— for visualizing, creating, reconciling, cleaning, and analyzing it. Some of these tools have been developed from within the Digital Humanities community, and others have been developed beyond it but adapted to our purposes. We hope to create the opportunity for fruitful exchange by providing time for hands-on demonstration and discussion.

All participants will have the opportunity to submit the following in advance of the workshop:

Answering an online form that indicates the type of LOD tools or platforms, or features within these, that they wish to see discussed at the workshop.
Details on where their tool (if they have one) fits in, and a description of their work with LOD.
A description (1 page max) of their LOD platform with features that they wish to showcase during the workshop.

Outline/Schedule
(Based on 6 hrs – Full Day)

Introductions
20 mins

Featured Tool Demos x4
30 mins

Coffee break + discussion
15 mins

Lightning Tool Demos x12
60 mins

Poster session and lunch
100 mins

(Participants wanting to do an afternoon workshop could shift to that at this point)

Discussion of challenges, desiderata, next steps etc. 60 mins

Coffee break
15 mins

Time for breakout discussions
60  mins

(re: possible collaborations etc. )
Workshop leaders:

Susan Brown
(sbrown@uoguelph.ca) is a Canada Research Chair in Collaborative Digital Scholarship and Professor of English at the University of Guelph, and Visiting Professor at the University of Alberta. She researches Victorian literature, women’s writing, and digital humanities. All of these interests inform

Orlando: Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present

,
an ongoing experiment in digital literary history published by Cambridge UP since 2006 that she co-directs. She directs the

Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory

, an online repository and research environment for literary studies in and about. Her current research touches on a range of topics in the digital humanities including interface design and usability, visualization and data mining, semantic technologies, and humanist-centered tool development. She is increasingly engaged with inquiry into how linked open data can serve humanities research. She also works on the impact of new technologies in the literature of the Victorian period. Brown is President of the

Canadian Society for Digital Humanities/Société canadienne des humanités numériques

.

Kim Martin
is the Ridley Post-doc in Digital Humanities and the Associate Director of THINC Lab at the University of Guelph. Her PhD thesis focussed on the serendipitous experiences of historians during their research process. She is currently working on linked data projects for Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory (CWRC) and on the Mellon-funded Records of Early English Drama - London (REED-London) project. Kim’s interests in serendipity and linked data tie neatly together with her work on

HuViz

—
the humanities visualizer, a tool developed by the CWRC team for interacting with linked open datasets.

Target Audience/Expected number of participants:
40

Special requirements for technical support:
Projector and screen. Ideally also boards of some kind (black, white, paper) on which to write, though we can bring something if need be. Decent internet access.
We will need one room that is big enough for 40 people.
Proposed budget:
The organizers will provide funds for lunch. Estimated cost: $300-400.

Call for Participation:
We will put out a call for participation based upon this proposal within two weeks of confirmation that the workshop will run.

Deadline for submissions:
We will ask for submissions by April 30th. We will make the papers available through a Dynamic Table of Contexts edition that expands the

one from last year

to other prospective participants and mount the ranking poll by May 5th and run the poll until May 31st. Applicants will be informed if they will be presenting and/or participating in the workshop by June 1st.

Program Committee:

Susan Brown Professor of English
University of Guelph

Sharon Farnel Metadata Coordinator
University of Alberta Libraries

Lisa Goddard
Academic Systems Librarian University of Victoria

Karl Grossner Geographer, DH Researcher University of Pittsburgh

Abigel Lemak PhD Student, English
University of Guelph

Kim Martin
Postdoc in DH
University of Guelph

Deb Stacey
Professor, Computer Science University of Guelph