This thesis presents the results of a 12-month-long internship in the Digital Libraries group of ... more This thesis presents the results of a 12-month-long internship in the Digital Libraries group of the NeMIS laboratory of ISTI-CNR. The focus of the internship was the development of a semi-automated tool for representing narratives in a digital library. This work is part of a larger research effort on the representation of narratives through Semantic Web technologies, including the development of an Ontology of Narratives based on the CIDOC CRM reference ontology. The tool which is presented in this thesis is composed of a web interface which allows the user to create a narrative starting from a specific subject, a triplification component to trasform the inserted knowledge into the OWL language, and several visualization components. The tool is based on the Ontology of Narratives, of which it is the first application, and also on Wikidata, an open collaborative knowledge base of recent development, whose entities are imported in the tool in order to facilitate the data insertion by...
An approach to the representation and documentation of craft processes is proposed. The proposed ... more An approach to the representation and documentation of craft processes is proposed. The proposed approach is a method for the systematic identification and digital representation of pertinent data, information, and knowledge. The outcome representation is compatible with contemporary digitisation practices and digital preservation standards. The implementation of the approach is provided within the context of an online platform that is accompanied by auxiliary tools for digital curation. This platform is a multiple user system, where craft representations can be collaboratively authored, shared, displayed, and digitally preserved in standardised formats. Basic uses of this scheme and presentational applications are provided, along with identification of future work and limitations.
Narratives are a fundamental part of human life. Every human being encounters countless stories d... more Narratives are a fundamental part of human life. Every human being encounters countless stories during their life, and these stories contribute to form a common understanding of reality. This is reflected in the current digital landscape, and especially on the Web, where narratives are published and shared everyday. However, the current digital representation of narratives is limited by the fact that each narrative is generally expressed as natural language text or other media, in an unstructured way that is neither standardized nor machine-readable. These limitations hinder the manageability of narratives by automated systems. One way to solve this problem would be to create an ontology of narrative, i.e., a formal model of what a narrative is, then develop semi-automated methods to extract narratives from natural language text, and use the extracted data to populate the ontology. This thesis attempts to investigate this research question, starting from the state of the art in the ...
Hypermedia Dante Network (HDN) is a 3-year Italian National Research Project, started in 2020, wh... more Hypermedia Dante Network (HDN) is a 3-year Italian National Research Project, started in 2020, which aims to enrich the functionalities of the DanteSources Digital Library to efficiently represent knowledge about the primary sources of Dante’s Comedy. DanteSources allows users to retrieve and visualize the list and the distribution of Dante's primary sources that have been identified by recent commentaries of five of Dante’s minor works (i.e. Vita nova, De vulgari eloquentia, Convivio, De Monarchia, and Rime). The digital library is based on a formal ontology expressed in Resource Description Framework Schema (RDFS) language. Based on the DanteSources experience, the HDN project aims to formally represent the primary sources of the Divine Comedy whose identification is based on several commentaries included in the Dartmouth Dante Project corpus. To reach this goal, we restructured and extended the DanteSources ontology to provide a wider and more complete representation of the k...
A web-based authoring platform for the representation of traditional crafts is proposed. This pla... more A web-based authoring platform for the representation of traditional crafts is proposed. This platform is rooted in a systematic method for craft representation, the adoption, knowledge, and representation standards of the cultural heritage (CH) domain, and the integration of outcomes from advanced digitization techniques. In this paper, we present the implementation of this method by an online, collaborative documentation platform where digital assets are curated into digitally preservable craft representations. The approach is demonstrated through the representation of three traditional crafts as use cases, and the lessons learned from this endeavor are presented.
Heritage Crafts involve tangible craft artefacts, materials, and tools and encompass traditional ... more Heritage Crafts involve tangible craft artefacts, materials, and tools and encompass traditional craftsmanship as a form of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Intangible HC dimensions include dexterity, know-how, and skilled use of tools, as well as identity and traditions of the communities in which craftsmanship is, or was, practiced. Despite their cultural significance, efforts towards HC digital representation and presentation are scattered. In the Mingei EU Innovation Action, an approach is developed towards systematising the representation of Heritage Crafts as Cultural Heritage for their preservation. The representation is expected to capture the wide spectrum of knowledge topics that HCs cover, from objects and their making, to hand gestures and tool uses that define craft motor skills, to the societal value, economic impact, and historical significance. In this article, we focus on the approach towards the creation of a knowledge and its representation. Examples and experiments ...
This paper presents a knowledge representation framework and provides tools to allow the represen... more This paper presents a knowledge representation framework and provides tools to allow the representation and presentation of the tangible and intangible dimensions of culinary tradition as cultural heritage including the socio-historic context of its evolution. The representation framework adheres to and extends the knowledge representation standards for the Cultural Heritage (CH) domain while providing a widely accessible web-based authoring environment to facilitate the representation activities. In strong collaboration with social sciences and humanities, this work allows the exploitation of ethnographic research outcomes by providing a systematic approach for the representation of culinary tradition in the form of recipes, both in an abstract form for their preservation and in a semantic representation of their execution captured on-site during ethnographic research.
International Journal of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, 2019
We present a preliminary study to introduce narratives as a first-class functionality in digital ... more We present a preliminary study to introduce narratives as a first-class functionality in digital libraries. The general idea is to enrich those libraries with semantic networks of events providing a meaningful contextualisation of the digital libraries’ objects. More specific motivations are presented through a set of use cases by different actors who would benefit from using narratives for different purposes. Then, we consider a specific digital library, Europeana, the largest European digital library in the cultural heritage domain. We discuss how the Europeana Data Model could be extended for representing narratives, and we introduce an ontology for narratives. We also present a semi-automatic tool, which, on the basis of the ontology, supports the creation and visualisation of narratives, and we show how the tool has been employed to create a narrative of the life of the painter Gustav Klimt as a case study. In particular, we focus our attention on the functionality of the tool ...
A protocol for the representation of traditional crafts and the tools to implement this are propo... more A protocol for the representation of traditional crafts and the tools to implement this are proposed. The proposed protocol is a method for the systematic collection and organization of digital assets and knowledge, their representation into a formal model, and their utilization for research, education, and preservation. A set of digital tools accompanies this protocol that enables the online curation of craft representations. The proposed approach was elaborated and evaluated with craft practitioners in three case studies. Lessons learned are shared and an outlook for future work is provided.
In this article, the Mingei Online Platform is presented as an authoring platform for the represe... more In this article, the Mingei Online Platform is presented as an authoring platform for the representation of social and historic context encompassing a focal topic of interest. The proposed representation is employed in the contextualised presentation of a given topic, through documented narratives that support its presentation to diverse audiences. Using the obtained representation, the documentation and digital preservation of social and historical dimensions of Cultural Heritage are demonstrated. The implementation follows the Human-Centred Design approach and has been conducted under an iterative design and evaluation approach involving both usability and domain experts.
The current Digital Libraries (DLs) usually return as answer of a user’s query a ranked list of t... more The current Digital Libraries (DLs) usually return as answer of a user’s query a ranked list of the resources included in the DLs but no semantic relation among the resources are reported. Using the Semantic Web technologies it is possible to improve these search functionalities introducing narratives as new search method. As narratives we intend semantic networks of events that are linked to the objects of the DLs and are endowed with a set of semantic relations that connect an event to another. These semantic networks may help the users to obtain a more complete knowledge on the subject of their searches. In this paper, we present a software architecture for building narratives in order to introduce them in DLs. Our architecture is composed of several tools (automatic and semi-automatic tools) for creating, storing and visualizing narratives. When possible, we reused open source components already available on-line, and for the software we developed, we freely distribute it for re...
This thesis presents the results of a 12-month-long internship in the Digital Libraries group of ... more This thesis presents the results of a 12-month-long internship in the Digital Libraries group of the NeMIS laboratory of ISTI-CNR. The focus of the internship was the development of a semi-automated tool for representing narratives in a digital library. This work is part of a larger research effort on the representation of narratives through Semantic Web technologies, including the development of an Ontology of Narratives based on the CIDOC CRM reference ontology. The tool which is presented in this thesis is composed of a web interface which allows the user to create a narrative starting from a specific subject, a triplification component to trasform the inserted knowledge into the OWL language, and several visualization components. The tool is based on the Ontology of Narratives, of which it is the first application, and also on Wikidata, an open collaborative knowledge base of recent development, whose entities are imported in the tool in order to facilitate the data insertion by...
An approach to the representation and documentation of craft processes is proposed. The proposed ... more An approach to the representation and documentation of craft processes is proposed. The proposed approach is a method for the systematic identification and digital representation of pertinent data, information, and knowledge. The outcome representation is compatible with contemporary digitisation practices and digital preservation standards. The implementation of the approach is provided within the context of an online platform that is accompanied by auxiliary tools for digital curation. This platform is a multiple user system, where craft representations can be collaboratively authored, shared, displayed, and digitally preserved in standardised formats. Basic uses of this scheme and presentational applications are provided, along with identification of future work and limitations.
Narratives are a fundamental part of human life. Every human being encounters countless stories d... more Narratives are a fundamental part of human life. Every human being encounters countless stories during their life, and these stories contribute to form a common understanding of reality. This is reflected in the current digital landscape, and especially on the Web, where narratives are published and shared everyday. However, the current digital representation of narratives is limited by the fact that each narrative is generally expressed as natural language text or other media, in an unstructured way that is neither standardized nor machine-readable. These limitations hinder the manageability of narratives by automated systems. One way to solve this problem would be to create an ontology of narrative, i.e., a formal model of what a narrative is, then develop semi-automated methods to extract narratives from natural language text, and use the extracted data to populate the ontology. This thesis attempts to investigate this research question, starting from the state of the art in the ...
Hypermedia Dante Network (HDN) is a 3-year Italian National Research Project, started in 2020, wh... more Hypermedia Dante Network (HDN) is a 3-year Italian National Research Project, started in 2020, which aims to enrich the functionalities of the DanteSources Digital Library to efficiently represent knowledge about the primary sources of Dante’s Comedy. DanteSources allows users to retrieve and visualize the list and the distribution of Dante's primary sources that have been identified by recent commentaries of five of Dante’s minor works (i.e. Vita nova, De vulgari eloquentia, Convivio, De Monarchia, and Rime). The digital library is based on a formal ontology expressed in Resource Description Framework Schema (RDFS) language. Based on the DanteSources experience, the HDN project aims to formally represent the primary sources of the Divine Comedy whose identification is based on several commentaries included in the Dartmouth Dante Project corpus. To reach this goal, we restructured and extended the DanteSources ontology to provide a wider and more complete representation of the k...
A web-based authoring platform for the representation of traditional crafts is proposed. This pla... more A web-based authoring platform for the representation of traditional crafts is proposed. This platform is rooted in a systematic method for craft representation, the adoption, knowledge, and representation standards of the cultural heritage (CH) domain, and the integration of outcomes from advanced digitization techniques. In this paper, we present the implementation of this method by an online, collaborative documentation platform where digital assets are curated into digitally preservable craft representations. The approach is demonstrated through the representation of three traditional crafts as use cases, and the lessons learned from this endeavor are presented.
Heritage Crafts involve tangible craft artefacts, materials, and tools and encompass traditional ... more Heritage Crafts involve tangible craft artefacts, materials, and tools and encompass traditional craftsmanship as a form of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Intangible HC dimensions include dexterity, know-how, and skilled use of tools, as well as identity and traditions of the communities in which craftsmanship is, or was, practiced. Despite their cultural significance, efforts towards HC digital representation and presentation are scattered. In the Mingei EU Innovation Action, an approach is developed towards systematising the representation of Heritage Crafts as Cultural Heritage for their preservation. The representation is expected to capture the wide spectrum of knowledge topics that HCs cover, from objects and their making, to hand gestures and tool uses that define craft motor skills, to the societal value, economic impact, and historical significance. In this article, we focus on the approach towards the creation of a knowledge and its representation. Examples and experiments ...
This paper presents a knowledge representation framework and provides tools to allow the represen... more This paper presents a knowledge representation framework and provides tools to allow the representation and presentation of the tangible and intangible dimensions of culinary tradition as cultural heritage including the socio-historic context of its evolution. The representation framework adheres to and extends the knowledge representation standards for the Cultural Heritage (CH) domain while providing a widely accessible web-based authoring environment to facilitate the representation activities. In strong collaboration with social sciences and humanities, this work allows the exploitation of ethnographic research outcomes by providing a systematic approach for the representation of culinary tradition in the form of recipes, both in an abstract form for their preservation and in a semantic representation of their execution captured on-site during ethnographic research.
International Journal of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, 2019
We present a preliminary study to introduce narratives as a first-class functionality in digital ... more We present a preliminary study to introduce narratives as a first-class functionality in digital libraries. The general idea is to enrich those libraries with semantic networks of events providing a meaningful contextualisation of the digital libraries’ objects. More specific motivations are presented through a set of use cases by different actors who would benefit from using narratives for different purposes. Then, we consider a specific digital library, Europeana, the largest European digital library in the cultural heritage domain. We discuss how the Europeana Data Model could be extended for representing narratives, and we introduce an ontology for narratives. We also present a semi-automatic tool, which, on the basis of the ontology, supports the creation and visualisation of narratives, and we show how the tool has been employed to create a narrative of the life of the painter Gustav Klimt as a case study. In particular, we focus our attention on the functionality of the tool ...
A protocol for the representation of traditional crafts and the tools to implement this are propo... more A protocol for the representation of traditional crafts and the tools to implement this are proposed. The proposed protocol is a method for the systematic collection and organization of digital assets and knowledge, their representation into a formal model, and their utilization for research, education, and preservation. A set of digital tools accompanies this protocol that enables the online curation of craft representations. The proposed approach was elaborated and evaluated with craft practitioners in three case studies. Lessons learned are shared and an outlook for future work is provided.
In this article, the Mingei Online Platform is presented as an authoring platform for the represe... more In this article, the Mingei Online Platform is presented as an authoring platform for the representation of social and historic context encompassing a focal topic of interest. The proposed representation is employed in the contextualised presentation of a given topic, through documented narratives that support its presentation to diverse audiences. Using the obtained representation, the documentation and digital preservation of social and historical dimensions of Cultural Heritage are demonstrated. The implementation follows the Human-Centred Design approach and has been conducted under an iterative design and evaluation approach involving both usability and domain experts.
The current Digital Libraries (DLs) usually return as answer of a user’s query a ranked list of t... more The current Digital Libraries (DLs) usually return as answer of a user’s query a ranked list of the resources included in the DLs but no semantic relation among the resources are reported. Using the Semantic Web technologies it is possible to improve these search functionalities introducing narratives as new search method. As narratives we intend semantic networks of events that are linked to the objects of the DLs and are endowed with a set of semantic relations that connect an event to another. These semantic networks may help the users to obtain a more complete knowledge on the subject of their searches. In this paper, we present a software architecture for building narratives in order to introduce them in DLs. Our architecture is composed of several tools (automatic and semi-automatic tools) for creating, storing and visualizing narratives. When possible, we reused open source components already available on-line, and for the software we developed, we freely distribute it for re...
AIUCD 2021 - DHs for society: e-quality, participation, rights and values in the Digital Age. Book of extended abstracts of the 10th national conference, 2021
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