Virtuelles DH-Kolloquium an der BBAW, 30.05.2022: „Fact, fiction or just claims? Modeling conflicting information as assertions in the RELEVEN project“

Im Rahmen des DH-Kolloquiums an der BBAW laden wir Sie herzlich zum nächsten Termin am Montag, den 30. Mai 2022, 16 Uhr c.t., ein (virtueller Raum: https://meet.gwdg.de/b/lou-eyn-nm6-t6b):

Tara Andrews (Universität Wien)
„Fact, fiction or just claims? Modeling conflicting information as assertions in the RELEVEN project“

The RELEVEN project seeks to cast a clearer light on the events of the „short eleventh century“ (c. 1030–1095) and specifically to get a better understanding of the ways in which the Christian world was perceived by its inhabitants at the time, particularly in the eastern half of Christendom but also to the north, where the faith had rapidly been expanding.

In order to do this we have to tackle two key challenges. The first is the historical challenge: we aim to re-evaluate the Christian world of the eleventh century and specifically to reorient the traditional western-focused narrative of the period by paying particular attention to events, movements, and trends in the eastern and northern parts of Christendom, as well as to their interconnectedness. This means that we encounter a whole range of contradictory opinions, uncertain facts and developing viewpoints that are crucial for reframing our understanding of the period.

This leads us to the digital challenge: we must find a way to link and connect large amounts of disparate sorts of data, and specifically we need a way to express our collected knowledge about the eleventh century that allows us to incorporate and model different, and even conflicting, perspectives about what we think we know. Within the project we do this by moving from a model of „linked open data“ to „linked open assertions“, in which we make sure that no data point is divorced from the context – source and/or scholarly authority – in which it was produced. For this task we have developed a data model for assertions known as the STAR model, which is implemented via CIDOC-CRM and OAI/ORE. In this talk I will discuss our STAR model and how it provides a means of expression for historical evidence that confronts the usual positivist orientation around ‘simple facts’. We put both scholarly interpretation and source provenance at the center of our approach to data construction by linking entire assertions, as well as their constituent subjects, predicates, objects, and claimants, to demonstrate corroboration, contradiction, and source dependency.

***

Die Veranstaltung findet virtuell statt; eine Anmeldung ist nicht notwendig. Zum Termin ist der virtuelle Konferenzrraum über den Link https://meet.gwdg.de/b/lou-eyn-nm6-t6b erreichbar. Wir möchten Sie bitten, bei Eintritt in den Raum Mikrofon und Kamera zu deaktivieren. Nach Beginn der Diskussion können Wortmeldungen durch das Aktivieren der Kamera signalisiert werden.

Der Fokus der Veranstaltung liegt sowohl auf praxisnahen Themen und konkreten Anwendungsbeispielen als auch auf der kritischen Reflexion digitaler geisteswissenschaftlicher Forschung. Weitere Informationen finden Sie auf der Website der BBAW.