Reasoning with Reasoning, Semantic technologies for research in the humanities and social sciences (STRiX) Göteborg, 24 November 2014 Kristin Dill, Austrian National Library (ONB) Gerold Tschumpel, Steffen Hennicke, Christian Morbidoni, Klaus Thoden, Alois Pichler

1. co-funded by the European Union
Reasoning with Reasoning
Semantic technologies for research in the
humanities and social sciences (STRiX)
Göteborg, 24 November 2014
Kristin Dill, Austrian National Library (ONB)
Gerold Tschumpel, Steffen Hennicke, Christian Morbidoni, Klaus
Thoden, Alois Pichler

2. Outline
1. Digitised Manuscripts to Europeana (DM2E)
2. Pundit
3. Reasoning with Reasoning for Digital Humanities
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3. Outline
1. Digitised Manuscripts to Europeana (DM2E)
2. Pundit
3. Reasoning with Reasoning for Digital Humanities
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4. 1. DM2E: Website www.dm2e.eu
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5. 1. DM2E: About
● Digitised Manuscripts to Europeana
● EU-FP7 CIP-ICT-PSP.2011.2.1 - Aggregating content in
Europeana
● 11 consortium parnters and 10 associated Partners
● Duration: Feb 2012 - Jan 2015 (36 months)
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6. 1. DM2E: What is Europeana?
www.europeana.eu
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7. 1. DM2E: Europeana Data Model
• Backbone of Europeana
• RDF representation of metadata
• Unites several standards & vocabularies
• Representation of cultural heritage objects
from libraries, archives and museums
• As generic as possible
• Can be specialised for different domains
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8. 1. DM2E: Goals of DM2E
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1. Aggregation of manuscript metadata &
content
2. Interoperability Infrastructure
3. Digital Humanities Applications and Research
4. Community Building

9. 1. DM2E: Goals of DM2E
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1. Aggregation of manuscript metadata &
content
2. Interoperability Infrastructure
3. Digital Humanities Applications and Research
4. Community Building

10. 1. DM2E: Project Architecture
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You are here

11. 1. DM2E: WP3 “DH Engineering”
DM2E is researching the scholarly practices in the
humanities as well building tools that respond to the
needs of scholars.
- http://dm2e.eu/digital-humanities/
Putting Linked Library Data to Work18.11.2014

12. 1. DM2E: WP3 Tasks
•Added value of EDM
•Functional primitives of the Digital Humanities
•Outreach DH community
•Open source annotation tools
Putting Linked Library Data to Work18.11.2014

13. Outline
1. Digitised Manuscripts to Europeana (DM2E)
2. Pundit
3. Reasoning with Reasoning for Digital Humanities
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14. 2. Pundit: https://thepund.it/
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15. 2. Pundit: Semantic Web Annotation Tool
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http://en.wikipedi
a.org/wiki/Plato
http://en.wikipedia
.org/wiki/Socrates
1913
Typescript
“Wittgenstein is
talking about
language signs
here in Ts-213”
discusses
discusses
document
type
has date
comment
ht
thttp://wittgensteinsource.org.org/

16. 2. Pundit: Web Page Augmentation
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17. 2. Pundit: Notebooks (Ask)
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18. 2. Pundit: Faceted Browser
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19. 2. Pundit: Visualisation using EdgeMaps
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20. 2. Pundit: Visualisation using TimeMapper
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21. 2. Pundit: PTP Template
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22. 2. Pundit: Play with Pundit
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http://dev.thepund.it/tutorials/evaminerv
a2014/

23. Outline
1. Digitised Manuscripts to Europeana (DM2E)
2. Pundit
3. Reasoning with Reasoning for Digital Humanities
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24. 3. Reasoning: Goals
“What kinds of 'reasoning' do digital humanists want to
see enabled by the data and information available in
Europeana together with those that are currently not
part of the Europeana portal?”
- DOW DM2E (2012)
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25. 3. Reasoning: What is SW Reasoning?
“Broadly speaking, inference on the Semantic Web can
be characterized by discovering new relationships”*...
*http://www.w3.org/standards/semanticweb/inference
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26. 3. Reasoning: What is SW Reasoning?
• ...using machines!
- large-scale machine-based processing of RDF data
- uses logic and axioms
- “defined via rule sets or vocabularies”*
- mathematical and computational
Example*:
Flipper isA Dolphin > Flipper isA Mammal
*http://www.w3.org/standards/semanticweb/inference
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27. 3. Reasoning: Challenges for DH scholars
1. Lack of familiarity
2. Reasoner’s “ability” contentious (Zöllner-Weber
2009)
3. Knowledge representation activity preconfigures
subsequent reasoning...
4. ...and in the Humanities often subjective
5. Humanities have complex and ambiguous research
objects (Oldmann/Doerr/Gradmann, t.b.p.)
6. Goals of humanist research not compatible
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28. 3. Reasoning: Humanist Reasoning?
“Reasoning, which has a long tradition that springs from
philosophy and logic, places emphasis on the process of
drawing inferences (conclusions) from some initial
information (premises).” (Holyoak/Morrison 2012, 2)
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29. 3. Reasoning: Humanist Reasoning for the SW
“inference on the Semantic Web can [also] be
characterized by discovering new relationships”*...
*http://www.w3.org/standards/semanticweb/inference
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30. 3. Reasoning: Humanist Reasoning for the SW
...by human reasoning when looking at the graph.
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31. 3. Reasoning: Methodology
1. Scholars creating Linked Data (of different complexity,
and from different perspectives)
2. Scholars use faceted browsers
3. to query the graph
4. and answer specific research questions.
5. Scholars are then asked to reflect on their methods
and results.
Low hanging fruits!
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32. 3. Reasoning: Faceted Browser
http://metasound.dibet.univpm.it/dm2e/ajax-solr-
master/examples/wab/
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33. 3. Reasoning: Capturing Scholars’ Reflections
http://metasound.dibet.univpm.it/dm2e/ajax-solr-
master/examples/wab/
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34. 3. Reasoning: Use Cases
1. ERC AdG EUROCORR - Linked Data
2. Georg Eckert Institut - Annotation Vocabulary
3. Wittgenstein Archives Bergen - WAB Ontology
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35. 3. Reasoning: Use Cases
1. ERC AdG EUROCORR - Linked Data
2. Georg Eckert Institut - Annotation Vocabulary
3. Wittgenstein Archives Bergen - WAB Ontology
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36. 3. Reasoning: GEI Use Case
• Trained historian in educational history
• Digital Library of the Georg-Eckert-Institute which
contains digitized historical textbooks from Germany
• Research question / interest
– Identifying topoi regarding the nation and the
globalised world and how their connotation in
different types of schoolbooks (religious
orientation, school type, regional localisation etc.)
change over time
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37. 3. Reasoning: GEI Use Case
Reasoning
1. creating the vocabulary for annotation
a. factual (about the book), e.g.
i. publication date and place, author, publication
house, religious orientation etc.
b. interpretative (about the topoi), e.g.
i. positive-modern connotated with / negative-
modern connotated with
ii. positive-male connotated with / negative-male
connotated with Reasoning

38. 3. Reasoning: GEI Use Case

39. 3. Reasoning: GEI Use Case
2. applying the vocabulary
a. interpretation of the texts
3. reasoning within the facetted browser (based on
manual 250 annotations)
a. creating hypothesis from the created annotations
i. basis for future in-depth and more systematic
research
b. ontology as the basis for other text analysis
programs?

40. 3. Reasoning: WAB Archives Use Case
• Digital humanities scholars with a background in
philosophy and Wittgenstein research
• Digital Library of the Wittgenstein Archives in Bergen
which contains Wittgens Nachlass
• Querying the WAB Ontology
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41. 3. Reasoning: WAB Archives Use Case
Reasoning
1. Creating the Ontology
Intended for the browsing of Wittgenstein's writings
(with Wittgenstein Source in focus) and their internal
and external relations, including bibliographic
metadata, references to persons and works of others,
datings of the single remarks, and also text genetic
paths.
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42. 3. Reasoning: WAB Archives Use Case
Reasoning
2. Asking the Research questions with the faceted
browser
a. Find both primary and secondary literature that
helps me discuss Wittgenstein’s conception of
philosophy as a whole and with a focus on a
subarea
b. Checking whether Grammar is a popular topic
among Wittgenstein annotators
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43. 3. Reasoning: WAB Archives Use Case
Reasoning: 3. Analysing the Results
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44. 3. Reasoning: Lessons Learned
• We are still evaluating
• Raise awareness regarding these issues
– rethink the term “Reasoning”
• Using facetted browsers as one possible way to
create a bridge between SW reasoning and humanist
reasoning
– three phases of “Reasoning” with browser
– new areas to model
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45. 3. Reasoning: Tenative Results Use Cases
• Humanist use cases
– intermediate results in an ongoing research
process*
• GEI use case
- opinion mining
• Wittgenstein
- create a basis for the contextualisation and
comparison of the ideas of the author and his
reception
• In general
– issue of authority and (social) context = trust
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46. Thank You!

47. Literature
• Holyoak, K. J. and Morrison, R. G. (eds) (2012). The Oxford Handbook of
Thinking and Reasoning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• McCarty, W. (2005). Humanities computing. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan.
• Oldman, D., Doerr, M. and Gradmann, S. (n.d.). ZEN and the Art of Linked
Data. New Strategies for a Semantic Web of Humanist Knowledge. To be
published in Schreibman, S., Siemens, R. and Unsworth, J. (eds), A new
Companion to Digital Humanities. Oxford: Blackwell [preprint].
• Zöllner-Weber, A. (2009). Ontologies and Logic Reasoning as Tools in
Humanities? Digital Humanities Quarterly, 3(4).
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48. Links
• http://dm2e.eu/
• https://thepund.it/
• http://mariandoerk.de/edgemaps/
• http://timemapper.okfnlabs.org/
• http://dev.thepund.it/tutorials/evaminerva2014/
• http://www.w3.org/
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