Le Carrefour des SHN / DH-Hub

LINCS’ “Forward Linking” provides an opportunity to engage in new research and tool development on topics covering all aspects of linked data for the study of culture in the Canadian context and beyond. The LINCS conference and workshop sessions aim to strengthen relationships among cultural organizations and Humanities and Social Science researchers for mutual and public benefit, fostering discussion and working towards strategies for using linked data to advance justice, reconciliation, and ethical and responsible use of technology.

The Forward Linking workshops take place on Wednesday, 8 May 2024. Registration is now open!

For information on their conference, visit their website!

Session 1: 9:00 to 10:30

Linked Open Data Fundamentals with Kim Martin and Sarah Roger

Linked Open Data (LOD) refers to a set of standards and practices that allow data to contribute to the Semantic Web. This introduction will cover how LOD works in theory and practice. It will provide an overview of various projects and tools for using and making it, with an emphasis on cultural data and on the suite of tools offered by the Linked Infrastructure for Networked Cultural Scholarship (LINCS). It will also touch on scholarly perspectives on LOD and the challenges and opportunities such data poses for humanities scholars as far as modelling, context, nuance, and honouring difference and specificity are concerned.  

This workshop is suitable for anyone desiring an introduction to LOD and the Semantic Web, as well as anyone who is interested in an overview of what LINCS does, considering working with LINCS tools, or would like to know more about preparing data for publication through LINCS. 

Ontologies and Vocabularies with Susan Brown, Alliyya Mo, and Deb Stacey

This workshop dives into the Semantic Web with its possibilities for humanities research through exploring ontologies and vocabularies for Linked Open Data (LOD): providing an introduction to how they function in relation to data structure and creation, and how they impact data publication, querying, and visualization. 

An understanding of the complementary roles played by OWL ontologies and SKOS vocabularies will lead into discussion of how to support critical approaches such as feminism, critical race, and Indigenous studies through ontology and vocabulary choices. Recognizing that ontologies and vocabularies both mobilize and constrain data, we will discuss how to evaluate the suitability of particular ontologies and vocabularies for particular approaches to research. Examples will draw on and also extend beyond the ontologies and tools offered by the Linked Infrastructure for Networked Cultural Scholarship (LINCS).

This workshop is suitable for anyone who is looking for a conceptual introduction to ontologies and vocabularies, and assumes familiarity with the core concepts of LOD.

Session 2: 11:00 to 12:30

Data Cleaning and Reconciliation with OpenRefine with Natalie Hervieux and Sarah Roger

OpenRefine is a free and easy-to-learn tool for changing and augmenting data. It has many uses, including cleaning and reconciling structured data (e.g., spreadsheets) in preparation for creating Linked Open Data (LOD). This workshop will provide a hands-on introduction to OpenRefine. Using sample data provided in the workshops, participants will be taught how to clean and reconcile. You do not need to have your own structured data to participate.

This workshop is suitable for anyone who is either new to OpenRefine or who is new to using it for cleaning, reconciling, and augmenting structured data. It is especially recommended for anyone who is interested in creating LOD with LINCS and would like a taster of the preliminary steps in the process.

Playing with LINCS APIs with Alliyya Mo and Kim Martin

The Linked Infrastructure for Networked Cultural Scholarship (LINCS) has developed several Application fProgramming Interfaces (APIs) that enable developers to access LINCS datasets and tools. In this workshop, we will provide an overview of how LINCS data is modelled as Linked Open Data (LOD), and introduce participants to the LINCS authority service, LINCS API, and the Linked Data Enhancement API. These APIs allow developers to access LINCS services that can reconcile entities, perform named entity recognition (NER), clean and massage RDF data for researcher datasets, and look up entities and their properties in the LINCS datasets. 

We will provide an overview of the available functionality and how to use it using example requests sent with Postman and cURL to the APIs. We will also look at a real-world implementation in the form of the LINCS Context Explorer, which is also available as a library for embedding within websites, demonstrating how linked data can enrich websites without modifying the underlying data.

This workshop is suitable for developers, researchers, and students with advanced technical skills who are interested in utilizing LINCS tools, and who know how to use APIs and understand the basics of LOD. We will canvas registrants in advance to discover their interests, and view this as an opportunity for connecting collaboratively with developers interested in leveraging linked data within their web environments.

ResearchSpace: An Overview with Robin Bergart and Zach Schoenberger

This workshop will provide an overview of the ResearchSpace environment for linked data. ResearchSpace is a web-based tool for the storage, review, publication, and discovery of Linked Open Data. It allows users to search, browse, visualize, and edit existing LOD stored in the LINCS triplestore. LINCS has adapted ResearchSpace as a publishing platform to support users who want to explore LINCS’s datasets and researchers whose data is published with LINCS. Hands-on work will focus on creating knowledge maps and semantic narratives, and on editing and enhancing data within ResearchSpace

This workshop is suitable for those who would like an introduction to ResearchSpace and for those involved in LINCS projects who would like some hands-on time with some of its more advanced functionalities.

Session 3: 13:30 to 15:00

Respectful Terminologies with Stacy Allison-Cassin and Camille Callison

Lead by the co-leads the National Indigenous Knowledge and Language Alliance’s Respectful Terminology Platform Project, this workshop will introduce the work of the RTPP which brings together community projects with a similar goal of respectful terminology for all, and to discuss needs and goals of a national, Indigenous-led platform for respectful terminologies.
[full description coming soon]

LEAF-Writer Workshop with Diane Jakacki

LEAF-Writer is a free web-based semantic editor that supports text encoding with the Text Encoding Initiative and linked open data annotation without users having to learn complex encoding. LEAF-Writer supports all the core functionalities of an XML editor including tagging and adding attributes, validation, and error feedback within a stylesheet-based what-you-see-is-what-you-get interface that can show or hide the tags. Workshop participants will get hands-on experience with LEAF-Writer’s extensive capabilities, choosing among TEI customizations that best support their work in diplomatic and/or semantic markup, adding inline scholarly notes and glosses, and even creating annotations – tagging named entities and associating them with recognized authorities like VIAF and Getty – that do double duty as in-text identifiers and potential contributions to the Semantic Web. The workshop will conclude with an overview of new LEAF and LINCS tools that will allow scholars to publish Linked Open Data created through LEAF-Writer to the Linked Infrastructure for Networked Cultural Scholarship.

LEAF-Writer runs in both a standalone version that is open to all, and is also a crucial component of the Linked Editing Academic Framework – Virtual Research Environment. This workshop will use the open LEAF-Writer Commons that uses Github for document storage and collaboration.

ResearchSpace Consultations with Robin Bergart, Jordan Lum, and Zach Schoenberger

This is an opportunity for researchers who have data within LINCS, or prospective LINCS projects, to consult with LINCS developers and UX specialists about how their data works or will work in ResearchSpace. Possibilities for consultation include tuning search pages, reviewing how their data interacts with the entity summary pages, planning how in-progress datasets will appear, and reviewing other functionality as it pertains to the specificities of their data.

This workshop is suitable for current or prospective LINCS researchers.