Vocabularies for classicists

Classicists working on digital projects that involve data are encouraged to link their data to the semantic web. In thinking about new vocabularies, whether for subjects, predicates, or objects of triples, one should begin with a survey of what already exists. By using one another's vocabularies, we reinforce the interoperability, and therefore utility, of our data. And it saves the time of having to reinvent the wheel. Below are a selection of vocabularies that may be useful to classicists.

General

• RDF Vocabulary Description Language, also known as RDF Schema (RDFS)
• Web Ontology Language (OWL)
• Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS)
• Dublin Core
• Friend of a Friend
• Wikipedia
• DBPedia

See others here.

Bibliography and Texts

It is helpful to understand something about the hierarchy of texts (such as the one adopted by Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records [FRBR]). Vocabularies describing ancient works in the abstract (under FRBR called works) will take a different approach than ones describing manuscripts, papyri, ostraca, etc. (under FRBR called items)

• Citation Ontology
• Linked LCCN
• Marc Codes List
• Open Annotation
• W3C Provenance Ontology
• SAWS Ontology for recording links within interrelated collections of texts

Geography

• NeoGeo Spatial Ontology
• Geonames
• Linked GeoData
• Pleiades Place/Location/Name Vocabulary
• Pleiades Places

Prosopography, persons

• VIAF
• ISNI
• Lexicon of Greek Personal Names

Objects

• Nomisma
• Papyri.info

Topics

• Library of Congress Authorities

For other examples of projects that use controlled vocabularies for linked open data, see the category listing as well as Very clean URIs.