mapping manuscript migrations: building and using a linked

University of San Diego University of San Diego

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Digital Initiatives Symposium

Apr 27th, 10:45 AM - 11:25 AM

Mapping Manuscript Migrations: Building and Using a Linked Mapping Manuscript Migrations: Building and Using a Linked

Open Data Environment for Medieval and Renaissance Open Data Environment for Medieval and Renaissance

Manuscript Studies Manuscript Studies

Lynn Ransom University of Pennsylvania, [email protected]

Toby Burrows University of Oxford, [email protected]

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Part of the Cataloging and Metadata Commons, Digital Humanities Commons, European History

Commons, and the Medieval Studies Commons

Ransom, Lynn and Burrows, Toby, "Mapping Manuscript Migrations: Building and Using a Linked Open Data Environment for Medieval and Renaissance Manuscript Studies" (2021). Digital Initiatives Symposium. 13. https://digital.sandiego.edu/symposium/2021/2021/13

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Mapping Manuscript Migrations: Building and Using a Linked Open Data Mapping Manuscript Migrations: Building and Using a Linked Open Data Environment for Medieval and Renaissance Manuscript Studies Environment for Medieval and Renaissance Manuscript Studies

Presenter 1 Title Presenter 1 Title Curator, SIMS Programs

Presenter 2 Title Presenter 2 Title Senior Researcher

Session Type Session Type Event

Abstract Abstract “Mapping Manuscript Migrations” is a digital humanities project that brings together three distinct data sets about the histories of more than 215,000 medieval and Renaissance manuscripts for browsing, searching, and visualization. Four leading institutions from Great Britain, France, Finland, and the United States collaborated on this project, pooling their expertise in Semantic Web technologies and medieval manuscript curation and research, as well as contributing their own data from the three contrasting datasets. The Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania, the Medieval Manuscripts Catalogue at the University of Oxford, and the Bibale database from the Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes--are brought together in a Linked Open Data environment, constructed by the team members from the e-Research Centre at the University of Oxford and the Semantic Computing Group at Aalto University in Finland, to aggregate, enhance, and present the data, with a data model based on the CIDOC-CRM and FRBROO ontologies.

While also considering the challenges and successes of this international collaboration, Dr Lynn Ransom (Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, University of Pennsylvania) will show how the project builds on the data and functionality of the source datasets and enables new approaches to research in manuscript history and provenance.

Location Location

Keywords Keywords Linked open data, manuscript studies, provenance studies, databases, data modeling, semantic web, interfaces, rdf query, SPARQL

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Dr Toby Burrows Dr Lynn RansomOxford e-Research Centre Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript StudiesUniversity of Oxford University of Pennsylvania

@MSMigrations @sims_mss

Mapping Manuscript Migrations: Building and

Using a Linked Open Data Environment for

Medieval and Renaissance Manuscript Studies

Mapping Manuscript Migrations Project Team

• Oxford: Toby Burrows, David Lewis, Andrew Morrison, Kevin Page, Pip Willcox, Thanasis Velios, Graham Klyne

• Aalto: Eero Hyvönen, Esko Ikkala, Mikko Koho, Jouni Touminen

• IRHT (Paris): Hanno Wijsman, Nicole Bergk Pinto, Antoine Brix, Mahaut Cazals, Alexandre Gaudin, Synnøve Myking, Pierre-Louis Pinault, Guillaume Porte

• Pennsylvania: Lynn Ransom, Doug Emery, Mitch Fraas, Benny Heller, Emma Thomson

Boccaccio, GiovanniDe Claris MulieribusFrance, probably Besançon ca. 1464-1470

Sold at Christie’s New York, 2001 US$47,000

Travels of the Boccaccio MS ca. 1464/70 to 2001

Data Sources

Medieval Manuscripts in Oxford Libraries

Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) XML documents

10,000 catalogue records; about 1,000 with detailed provenance information

Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts

Relational database - bespoke data model

240,000 records containing provenance-related observations of manuscript histories

BibaleRelational database - bespoke data model

More than 16,000 manuscript records with detailed provenance information

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Linked Data 1

Slide: Dr Kevin Page (OeRC)

Linked Data 2


Linked Data 3


Linked Open Data Stack

MMM Project Products• Unified Data Model for manuscript history and provenance (derived from

CIDOC-CRM and FRBR ontologies)

• Conversion and transformation tools and pipelines

• LOD vocabularies with identifiers for 222,000 manuscripts, 435,000 works, 56,000 actors, 5,000 places

• Public SPARQL endpoint to the MMM triple store (20 million RDF triples)

• Public portal: browsing, searching, visualizations (Sampo-UI software)

• Data export and downloads (from the public portal and Zenodo data repository)

• GitHub site for tools, data, and documentation

• Publications and presentations (50+)

MMM Project Outputs

MMM Data Model

Reconciliation: Vocabularies

Data Transformation Pipeline

Data Transformation Pipeline

Diagram: Dr Mikko Koho (Aalto University)

Access to the Mapping Manuscript Migrations data

222,000 Manuscripts 435,000 Works937,000 Events 5,000 Places 56,000 People and Organizations (Actors)

• Browse and search – via the MMM Portal (Sampo-UI software)

• Visualize the data on maps: places of origin; migrations over time; last known location – via the MMM Portal

• Inspect the underlying data – via Linked Data Finland

• Explore the data with SPARQL queries – via SPARQL endpoint + Yasgui

• Export the data into your own software environment – via Zenodo (all data) or MMM Portal + Yasgui (subsets of data)

Using MMM data for research

• Which French collectors acquired manuscripts in the century after the end of the Wars of Religion (1598)? Where are their manuscripts now?

• Which manuscripts containing texts by Ramon Llul were sold in the 19th century?

• Which manuscripts formerly owned by Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872) are now in North American libraries?

• How many manuscripts were produced in London in the 15th century?

• Did Sir Thomas Phillipps own a thirteenth-century bible with historiated initials?

Original MMM Research Question

Bibale results – public interface

Bibale interface – comments

Oxford results – public interface

Oxford interface – comments

SDBM results – public interface

SDBM interface – comments

What French collectors purchased manuscripts in the century after the end of the Wars of Religion (i.e., after 1598)? Where are their manuscripts now?

Currently impossible. One can currently not run a query on transactions of a specific period (e.g. after a specififc year).

One general problem (in Bibale, in the UI and elsewhere) remains that it is difficult to define a "French collector", since it can involve birthplace, but also any other place of activity. We have discussed this at several occasions.

You can filter the list of "People" by role (e.g., "Owner, signer, or donor”). But you cannot further filter this list by country - whether this is place of birth, place of death, or place of residence.

The interface does not display any information about individual people (dates or places of birth and death, etc.).

This question can't easily be answered. You can search for SDBM Names that are linked to France and have life dates after 1598, but then you'd have to run separate queries to find people linked to places nested within France (there's currently no way to search for France and all of its children within the same query). Once you found all of these names, you could then view the entries linked to them and determine last known locations, but this would be very time consuming.

SDBM could be improved by allowing for nested place searching (the data is in there, it just isn't possible in the UI).

32

Really Digging Into the Data:

Querying the MMM SPARQL Endpoint

34

SPARQL Endpoint

https://api.triplydb.com/s/mvOuzPWvk

New Research Questions?

35


Which collectors bought manuscripts from Wilfrid Voynich?

36

CULTIVATE MSS Project: Cultural Values and the International Trade in Medieval

European Manuscripts, c. 1900-1945

https://www.ies.sas.ac.uk/research-projects-archives/cultivate-mss-project




Where were the collectors located?

37








What do we know about the kind of manuscripts he sold?

38





New Research Questions



What do we know about the kind of manuscripts he sold?

https://api.triplydb.com/s/E6ed-lb0a 39

https://api.triplydb.com/s/E6ed-lb0a

(etc …)

● 80 transfer events of manuscripts sold by Voynich between 1900-1934● Sold to mostly American and European individuals and institutions● Manuscripts produced in western Europe and England, ranging in date

from the 10th to 15th century


etc...

Results


https://api.triplydb.com/s/wRZLM-hR4

New Research Question

What is the average height to width ratio for liturgical manuscripts, specifically missals, breviaries and the quasi-liturgical books of hours?


42

Results




Results

● Height to width ratios for a majority of liturgical manuscripts (missals, breviaries, books of hours) average around 1:5

● Outliers suggest non-traditional formats or bad source data



What can we learn about the social backgrounds of 19th-century English manuscript collectors?

https://api.triplydb.com/s/D1ITlSyTW



What can we learn about the social backgrounds of 19th-century English manuscript collectors?


Wikidata search


Results


etc ...

● 89 distinct names of people with death dates in the 19th century, who have a total of 81 different occupations between them.

● Politicians (21) and writers (17) are the most common, though there are also an astrologer, a brewer, and at least three slave holders.

● Each person has an average of two occupations, though some have many more than this: 18 in the case of William Morris!



How many women were involved in collecting between 1900-1950 and what were their social backgrounds?

https://api.triplydb.com/s/vnxpNsDQJ


Results


● 8 distinct women● diverse range of careers, from art collector to statistician, lawyer, economist, etc.● Low number of female collectors


Results



Why?

Results



Why?● Low number of female collectors that have been given VIAF numbers in both MMM and

Wikidata

Manuscript provenance data – future directions

• Improving the structure and content of provenance data in library catalogues and databases, e.g., MARC and TEI

– Last-known location versus current location

– Mapping ownership chains for a specific manuscript

– Specifying distinct types of events

• Working towards Linked Open Data for medieval and Renaissance studies

– Deciding which external vocabularies are most effective for reconciliation

– Lack of specialist medieval and Renaissance vocabularies in Linked Open Data form

– Implementing unique global identifiers for manuscripts (ISMI)

• Making data available for reuse– Formats, licencing, platforms

Mapping Manuscript Migrations

MMM Portal: https://mappingmanuscriptmigrations.org/

More information: http://blog.mappingmanuscriptmigrations.org/

https://github.com/mapping-manuscript-migrations

Twitter: @MSMigrations

Contacts:o Dr Toby Burrows [email protected]

o Prof. Eero Hyvönen [email protected]

o Dr Lynn Ransom [email protected]

o Dr Hanno Wijsman [email protected]

https://mappingmanuscriptmigrations.org/

http://blog.mappingmanuscriptmigrations.org/

https://github.com/mapping-manuscript-migrations





mapping manuscript migrations: building and using a linked

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