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This article is a report about the progress and current status of the World Historical Gazetteer (whgazetteer.org) (WHG) in the context of its value for helping to organize and record digital and paleographic information. It summarizes the development and functionality of the WHG as a software platform for connecting specialist collections of historical place names. It also reviews the idea of places as entities (rather than simple objects with single labels). It also explains the utility of gazetteers in digital library infrastructure and describes potential future developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last years, several scientific digital libraries (DLs) in digital humanities (DH) field have been developed following the Open Science principles. These DLs aim at sharing the research outcomes, in several cases as FAIR data, and at creating linked information spaces. In several cases, to reach these aims the Semantic Web technologies and Linked Data have been used. This paper presents how the current scientific DLs in the DH field can provide the creation of linked information spaces and navigational services that allow users to navigate them, using Semantic Web technologies to formally represent, search and browsing knowledge. To support the argument, we present our experience in developing a scientific DL supporting scholars in creating, evolving and consulting a knowledge base related to Medieval and Renaissance geographical works within the three years (2020–2023) Italian National research project IMAGO—Index Medii Aevi Geographiae Operum. In the presented case study, a linked information space was created to allow users to discover and navigate knowledge across multiple repositories, thanks to the extensive use of ontologies. In particular, the linked information spaces created within the IMAGO project make use of five different datasets, i.e. Wikidata, the MIRABILE digital archive, the Nuovo Soggettario thesaurus, Mapping Manuscript Migration knowledge base and the Pleiades gazetteer. The linking among different datasets allows to considerably enrich the knowledge collected in the IMAGO KB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) specification and its SKOS eXtension for Labels (SKOS-XL) became formal W3C recommendations in 2009, a significant number of conventional Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS) (including thesauri, classification schemes, name authorities, and lists of codes and terms, produced before the arrival of the ontology-wave) have made their journeys to join the Semantic Web mainstream. This paper uses "LOD KOS" as an umbrella term to refer to all of the value vocabularies and lightweight ontologies within the Semantic Web framework. The paper provides an overview of what the LOD KOS movement has brought to various communities and users. These are not limited to the colonies of the value vocabulary constructors and providers, nor the catalogers and indexers who have a long history of applying the vocabularies to their products. The LOD dataset producers and LOD service providers, the information architects and interface designers, and researchers in sciences and humanities, are also direct beneficiaries of LOD KOS. The paper examines a set of the collected cases (experimental or in real applications) and aims to find the usages of LOD KOS in order to share the practices and ideas among communities and users. Through the viewpoints of a number of different user groups, the functions of LOD KOS are examined from multiple dimensions. This paper focuses on the LOD dataset producers, vocabulary producers, and researchers (as end-users of KOS). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dublin Core descriptors capture metadata in most repositories, and this includes recent repositories dedicated to datasets. DC descriptors are generic and are being adapted to the requirements of different communities with the so-called Dublin Core Application Profiles that rely on the agreement within user communities, taking into account their evolving needs. In this paper, we propose an automated process to help curators and users discover the descriptors that best suit the needs of a specific research group in the task of describing and depositing datasets. Our approach is supported on Dendro, a prototype research data management platform, where an experimental method is used to rank and present DC Terms descriptors to the users based on their usage patterns. User interaction is recorded and used to score descriptors. In a controlled experiment, we gathered the interactions of two groups as they used Dendro to describe datasets from selected sources. One of the groups viewed descriptors according to the ranking, while the other had the same list of descriptors throughout the experiment. Preliminary results show that (1) some DC Terms are filled in more often than others, with different distribution in the two groups, (2) descriptors in higher ranks were increasingly accepted by users in detriment of manual selection, (3) users were satisfied with the performance of the platform, and (4) the quality of description was not hindered by descriptor ranking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the LODmilla browser, we try to support linked data exploration in a generic way learning from the 20 years of web browser evolution as well as from scholars' opinions who try to use it as a research exploration tool. In this paper, generic functions for linked open data (LOD) browsing are presented, and it is also explained what kind of information search tactics they enable with linked data describing publications. Furthermore, LODmilla also supports the sharing of graph views and the correction of LOD data during browsing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we present PREMIS OWL. This is a semantic formalisation of the PREMIS 2.2 data dictionary of the Library of Congress. PREMIS 2.2 are metadata implementation guidelines for digitally archiving information for the long term. Nowadays, the need for digital preservation is growing. A lot of the digital information produced merely a decade ago is in danger of getting lost as technologies are changing and getting obsolete. This also threatens a lot of information from heritage institutions. PREMIS OWL is a semantic long-term preservation schema. Preservation metadata are actually a mixture of provenance information, technical information on the digital objects to be preserved and rights information. PREMIS OWL is an OWL schema that can be used as data model supporting digital archives. It can be used for dissemination of the preservation metadata as Linked Open Data on the Web and, at the same time, for supporting semantic web technologies in the preservation processes. The model incorporates 24 preservation vocabularies, published by the LOC as SKOS vocabularies. Via these vocabularies, PREMIS descriptions from different institutions become highly interoperable. The schema is approved and now managed by the Library of Congress. The PREMIS OWL schema is published at . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]