LAWDI FAQ

Information about the NEH-ODF funded Linked Ancient World Data Institute (LAWDI) in the form of a FAQ. This page is under construction and feedback is welcome.

Practical Information

 * When: LAWDI will take place from May 31 to June 2nd, 2012. There will be another session in 2013 at Drew University in New Jersey.
 * Where: New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at 15 East 84th St., New York City.
 * Is there funding to attend?
 * Yes! LAWDI is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities Office of Digital Humanities. LAWDI can cover travel, lodging and per-diem meal expenses for 20 participants. We have budgeted for travel within the United States, but LAWDI funds can be put towards travel from overseas.
 * When are applications due? When will applicants be informed of the results?
 * Applications are due on February 17, 2012. We will reply in a timely fashion after that date.
 * What should the application look like?
 * Applications should be in the form of a single-page statement of interest. This can describe ongoing or planned work relavent to the use of Linked Open Data in the Ancient World.
 * Who can apply?
 * LAWDI will welcome applications from faculty, university staff, graduate students, archivists, librarians, museum professionals and anyone else with a serious interest in the creation of resources for the study of the Ancient World. We are hoping to have a mix of technical experts, disciplinary experts, and people who are both so that everyone benefits from interaction between LAWDI participants.
 * '''What do you mean by "Ancient World"?
 * At LAWDI we mean the Ancient Mediterranean and Ancient Near East. Greece, Rome, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Biblical Studies, Aegean Pre-history and any related fields. The goal is to construe those categories as broadly as reasonably possible.
 * Is LAWDI for technical experts, "content" experts, or somebody else?
 * Both and all. If you are a technically competent expert already creating stable resources for the study of the Ancient World, come to LAWDI and you'll meet other like minded people as well as potential users who may be interested in linking their resources to yours. If you have a project in mind that you think could benefit from looking and acting like the projects listed in the page Very clean URIs, then come to LAWDI and be introduced to some of the basic principles that will allow you to move forward with confidence. The LAWDI faculty represent a mix of technical competence, project leadership, and expertise in the Ancient World. We are all looking forward to interacting with everyone who will be there.

About Linked Open Data
   36.202097  An ancient place, cited: BAtlas 67 C4 Antiochia/Theoupolis Antiochia Theoupolis Iopolis 36.15818 <rdfs:label>Antiochia/Theoupolis</rdfs:label> </spatial:Feature> </rdf:RDF>
 * What is Linked Open Data?
 * The site linkedata.org answers that question with, "Linked Data is about using the Web to connect related data that wasn't previously linked, or using the Web to lower the barriers to linking data currently linked using other methods. More specifically, Wikipedia defines Linked Data as 'a term used to describe a recommended best practice for exposing, sharing, and connecting pieces of data, information, and knowledge on the Semantic Web using URIs and RDF.'"
 * At LAWDI we start with an even simpler definition. Linked Open Data encompasses any creation of or reference to stable URIs for scholarly resources related to the Ancient World. Examples of stable URIs include those created by the Pleiades project for geographic entities (e.g. http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/658381 for Antioch ) and by the American Numismatic Society's for its coins (e.g.http://numismatics.org/collection/1984.146.586). And note that the ANS record links to the Pleiades record. A list of other project publishing clean and stable URI is available on the page Very clean URIs. By bringing together people with a serious interest in both the creation and re-use of such URIs, LAWDI will forward the goal of a richly linked internet that encourages the discovery of high-quality information.
 * I've heard of RDF, but what is it?
 * RDF is short for 'Resource Description Framework'. RDF is a way of placing information on the internet so that it is readable and usable by automatic processors. An example, is the Pleiades URI for Antioch used above: http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/658381 . If you append '/rdf' to that address (http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/658381/rdf), you'll get the text given in the box below. Look closely and it's not very hard to read. 'Theoupolis</skos:altLabel>' is just a standardized way of indicating that the site Antioch also had the name Theoupolis. While three days is not enough time for an in-depth course on RDF, there will be people at LAWDI who know a lot about it and we expect there to be productive interactions between them and authors interested in creating or linking to RDF.


 * By the way, what's a URI and how is one different from a URL?
 * URI stands for "Uniform Resource Identifier", meaning a string (sequence) of characters that can uniquely identify anything on the internet. URL stands for 'Uniform Resource Locator', meaning a string of characters that indicate where something can be found. By analogy, think of a Social Security (SSN) number that uniquely identifies a person; that person will also have a street address where they can be reached by mail or visited in person. The SSN is similar to a URI in that it won't change, but the address might. In Linked Open Data, it is one best-practice to use a URL as the URI for any publicly available web-based resource that can be easily re-used by others. Meaning, the string 'http://opencontext.org/subjects/6A48C92B-E9DB-4CA0-1F9E-2F3ECEFC1C7C' is both the permanent identifier for that page describing a coin found at Petra, and the location where that page can be found. OpenContext goes a long way to making this clear by offering a 'Suggested Citation' that includes the URI. In general, combining the roles of URI and URL, which requires a commitment to the permanence of URLs, enables many of the benefits of Linked Open Data. In this context, 'URI' is often the preferred term within Digital Humanities and Linked Open Data. This usually means that in casual conversation, you can replace with 'URL' with 'URI' whenever somebody is talking about permanent, high-quality web-based resources.