Web Information Organization

UNC SILS, INLS 620, Fall 2023

August 21
Introduction

Whatโ€™s this class all about?

August 28
No meeting this week

View notes Updated Tuesday 8/22 1:57 PM

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 12,800 words

This weekโ€™s meeting was cancelled due to a campus tragedy. Iโ€™ve left the readings linked below for your reference.

Data comes in different forms, and each form has certain affordances.

๐Ÿ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. Shaw, Ryan. “The Forms of Descriptions (Part 1),” 2022. PDF.
    4,300 words
  2. Shaw, Ryan. “The Forms of Descriptions (Part 2),” 2022. PDF.
    8,500 words
  3. Optional
    Hogan, Aidan. “Web of Data.” In The Web of Data, 15–57. Springer, 2020. PDF.
    16,100 words
    Reading tips

    Focus on section 2.2 (โ€œWeb of Data: Conceptsโ€) on pages 16โ€“40. Feel free to skim or skip the rest. If youโ€™re really pressed for time, just read section 2.2.1 (โ€œDataโ€) on pages 16โ€“21.

August 28
Class cancelled

September 4
No meeting this week

September 4
Labor Day

Due to the Labor Day holiday, we will not meet this week.

September 11
(Semantic) data modeling

View notes Updated Monday 9/11 10:54 AM

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 15,000 words

Data modeling is the design of a formal language intended to aid communication and mediate among different purposes and perspectives.

๐Ÿ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. Posner, Miriam. What Is Linked Open Data?, 2021. https://youtu.be/VZBpFiLbi-Y.
  2. Allemang, Dean, Jim Hendler, and Fabien Gandon. “What Is the Semantic Web?” In Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, 3rd ed., 1–18. ACM Books 33. Association for Computing Machinery, 2020. PDF.
    8,000 words
  3. Allemang, Dean, Jim Hendler, and Fabien Gandon. “Semantic Modeling.” In Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, 3rd ed., 19–35. ACM Books 33. Association for Computing Machinery, 2020. PDF.
    7,000 words

September 11
Data modeling assignment handed out

September 18
The Web

View notes Updated Wednesday 9/20 3:01 PM

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 15,100 words

The (World Wide) Web is an Internet-scale distributed hypermedia system. It exists by means of voluntary compliance with open communication protocols and data format standards.

๐Ÿ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. Richardson, Leonard, and Mike Amundsen. “Surfing the Web.” In RESTful Web APIs, 1–16. Sebastopol, California: O’Reilly, 2013. PDF.
    4,500 words
  2. Richardson, Leonard, and Mike Amundsen. “Resources and Representations.” In RESTful Web APIs, 29–43. Sebastopol, California: O’Reilly, 2013. PDF.
    4,900 words
  3. Hogan, Aidan. “Introduction.” In The Web of Data, 1–14. Springer, 2020. PDF.
    5,700 words
    Reading tips

    Focus on section 1.2 (โ€œThe Current Webโ€), pages 6โ€“14.

  4. Optional
    Allemang, Dean, Jim Hendler, and Fabien Gandon. “Linked Data.” In Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, 3rd ed., 85–118. ACM Books 33. Association for Computing Machinery, 2020. PDF.
    11,600 words

September 18
Data modeling assignment due

September 18
The Web and RDF assignment handed out

September 25
No meeting this week

September 25
Well-being day

Due to the well-being day, we will not meet this week.

October 2
RDF: terms, triples, graphs

View notes Updated Monday 10/2 1:27 PM

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 14,000 words

The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a conceptual model for structuring information into triples that can be combined into graphs.

๐Ÿ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. DuCharme, Bob. “What Is RDF?,” June 27, 2021. https://www.bobdc.com/blog/whatisrdf/.
    2,100 words
  3. Schreiber, Guus, and Yves Raimond. “RDF Data Model.” In RDF 1.1 Primer. W3C, 2014. https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf11-primer/#section-data-model.
    1,300 words
  4. Allemang, Dean, Jim Hendler, and Fabien Gandon. “RDF—The Basis of the Semantic Web.” In Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, 3rd ed., 37–67. ACM Books 33. Association for Computing Machinery, 2020. PDF.
    7,000 words
  5. Optional
    Hogan, Aidan. “Resource Description Framework.” In The Web of Data, 59–109. Springer, 2020. PDF.
    10,000 words
  6. Optional
    W3C. “RDF 1.1 Concepts and Abstract Syntax,” February 25, 2014. https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf11-concepts/.

October 9
RDF: serializations

View notes Updated Monday 10/9 1:04 PM

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 10,100 words

Because RDF is a purely conceptual model, it does not specify how data should be written down or serialized. There are several alternative standards for serialization.

๐Ÿ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. Schreiber, Guus, and Yves Raimond. “Writing RDF Graphs.” In RDF 1.1 Primer. W3C, 2014. https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf11-primer/#section-graph-syntax.
    2,900 words
  2. Allemang, Dean, Jim Hendler, and Fabien Gandon. “Alternatives for Serialization.” In Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, 3rd ed., 68–63. ACM Books 33. Association for Computing Machinery, 2020. PDF.
    2,200 words
  3. Hogan, Aidan. “RDF Syntaxes.” In The Web of Data, 94–109. Springer, 2020. PDF.
    5,000 words
  4. Optional
    Sporny, Manu. What Is JSON-LD?, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vioCbTo3C-4.

October 9
The Web and RDF assignment due

October 16
RDF Schema and RDF vocabularies

View notes Updated Monday 10/16 2:29 PM

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 13,500 words

RDF Schema is a data modeling language layered on top of the basic RDF conceptual model. It provides additional tools for describing classifications and collections of resources.

๐Ÿ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. DuCharme, Bob. “What Is RDFS?,” July 25, 2021. https://www.bobdc.com/blog/whatisrdfs/.
    1,500 words
  2. Schreiber, Guus, and Yves Raimond. “RDF Vocabularies.” In RDF 1.1 Primer. W3C, 2014. https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf11-primer/#section-vocabulary.
    700 words
  3. Allemang, Dean, Jim Hendler, and Fabien Gandon. “RDF Schema.” In Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, 3rd ed., 201–32. ACM Books 33. Association for Computing Machinery, 2020. PDF.
    11,300 words
  4. Optional
    Hogan, Aidan. “RDF Schema and Semantics.” In The Web of Data, 111–83. Springer, 2020. PDF.
    25,100 words
  5. Optional
    W3C. “RDF Schema 1.1,” February 25, 2014. https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-schema/.
    4,000 words

October 16
RDFS assignment handed out

October 19โ€“20
Fall break

October 23
Wikidata and Wikibase

View notes Updated Monday 10/23 8:13 AM

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 11,900 words

Wikidata is a free and openly editable knowledge base that is published as RDF. Wikibase is the software it runs on.

๐Ÿ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. Vanderbilt University. “Learn Wikidata.” Accessed January 7, 2022. https://www.learnwikidata.net/.
  2. Vrandečić, Denny, and Markus Krötzsch. “Wikidata: A Free Collaborative Knowledgebase.” Communications of the ACM 57, no. 10 (September 23, 2014): 78–85. https://doi.org/10.1145/2629489.
    5,100 words
  3. Wikidata. “Help:Items,” n.d. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Help:Items.
    1,900 words
  4. Wikidata. “Help:Properties,” n.d. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Help:Properties.
    1,200 words
  5. Wikidata. “Help:Statements,” n.d. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Help:Statements.
    1,800 words
  6. Wikidata. “Help:Data Type,” n.d. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Help:Data_type.
    1,900 words
  7. Optional
    Wikibase. “Wikibase/DataModel,” n.d. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikibase/DataModel.
    7,200 words
  8. Optional
    Wikibase. “Wikibase/Indexing/RDF Dump Format,” n.d. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikibase/Indexing/RDF_Dump_Format.
    4,800 words

October 30
SPARQL 1

View notes Updated Tuesday 10/31 9:41 AM

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 21,400 words

The SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language (SPARQL) is a query language for RDF.

๐Ÿ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. DuCharme, Bob. “Jumping Right in: Some Data and Some Queries.” In Learning SPARQL: Querying and Updating with SPARQL 1.1, 2nd ed., 1–17. Sebastopol: O’Reilly Media, 2013. PDF.
    5,100 words
  2. DuCharme, Bob. “SPARQL Queries: A Deeper Dive.” In Learning SPARQL: Querying and Updating with SPARQL 1.1, 2nd ed., 47–102. Sebastopol: O’Reilly Media, 2013. PDF.
    14,100 words
  3. Wikimedia Foundation. Querying Wikidata with SPARQL for Absolute Beginners, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJph4q0Im98.
  4. “A Gentle Introduction to the Wikidata Query Service.” In Wikidata, n.d. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:SPARQL_query_service/A_gentle_introduction_to_the_Wikidata_Query_Service.
    2,200 words
  5. Optional
    Wikidata. “Wikidata:SPARQL Query Service/Queries,” n.d. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:SPARQL_query_service/queries.

October 30
RDFS assignment due

October 30
Wikidata and SPARQL assignment handed out

November 6
SPARQL 2

View notes Updated Tuesday 10/31 9:41 AM

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 18,900 words

This week weโ€™ll continue exploring what can be done with SPARQL.

๐Ÿ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. Allemang, Dean, Jim Hendler, and Fabien Gandon. “Querying the Semantic Web—SPARQL.” In Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, 3rd ed., 119–80. ACM Books 33. Association for Computing Machinery, 2020. PDF.
    18,900 words
  2. Optional
    Hogan, Aidan. “SPARQL Query Language.” In The Web of Data, 323–448. Springer, 2020. PDF.
    37,500 words
  3. Optional
    W3C. “SPARQL 1.1 Query Language,” March 21, 2013. https://www.w3.org/TR/sparql11-query/.

November 13
Semantic data modeling in practice

This week we will have two guests, who will talk with us about how they do this stuff for real.

Sara Mae O’Brien-Scott is a Senior Semantic Engineering Consultant at Enterprise Knowledge, where she specializes in taxonomy, ontology and knowledge graph design and implementation.

Yu Lee An is a historical musicologist and a SILS doctoral student, whose dissertation research involves building a semantic knowledge graph of the British music trade during the Georgian and Victorian eras.

November 13
Wikidata and SPARQL assignment due

November 20
Shape constraints

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 19,800 words

Shape constraint languages (SHACL and ShEx) allow us to prescribe a certain โ€œshapeโ€ for a graph, by requiring or forbidding certain patterns of triples.

๐Ÿ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. Hogan, Aidan. “Shape Constraints and Expressions.” In The Web of Data, 449–513. Springer, 2020. PDF.
    19,800 words
  2. Wikidata. “Wikidata:WikiProject Schemas,” n.d. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Schemas.
  3. Optional
    Allemang, Dean, Jim Hendler, and Fabien Gandon. “Extending RDF: RDFS and SHACL.” In Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, 3rd ed., 181–200. ACM Books 33. Association for Computing Machinery, 2020. PDF.
    7,400 words

November 22โ€“24
Thanksgiving recess

November 27
OWL 1

View notes Updated Monday 11/27 11:42 AM

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 25,000 words

The Web Ontology Language (OWL) is a data modeling language layered on top of RDF Schema (which is why some parts of OWL are referred to as โ€œRDF-Plus.โ€ OWL enables more complex inferences to be drawn from RDF data.

๐Ÿ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. Allemang, Dean, Jim Hendler, and Fabien Gandon. “RDFS-Plus.” In Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, 3rd ed., 233–69. ACM Books 33. Association for Computing Machinery, 2020. PDF.
    12,400 words
  2. Allemang, Dean, Jim Hendler, and Fabien Gandon. “Using RDFS-Plus in the Wild.” In Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, 3rd ed., 271–302. ACM Books 33. Association for Computing Machinery, 2020. PDF.
    12,600 words
  3. Optional
    Allemang, Dean, Jim Hendler, and Fabien Gandon. “SKOS—Managing Vocabularies with RDFS-Plus.” In Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, 3rd ed., 303–18. ACM Books 33. Association for Computing Machinery, 2020. PDF.
    5,700 words

November 27
SHACL and OWL assignment handed out

December 4
OWL 2

View notes Updated Monday 12/4 11:46 AM

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 10,000 words

This week we will continue exploring what can be done with OWL.

๐Ÿ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. Allemang, Dean, Jim Hendler, and Fabien Gandon. “Basic OWL.” In Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, 3rd ed., 319–51. ACM Books 33. Association for Computing Machinery, 2020. PDF.
    10,000 words
  2. Optional
    Allemang, Dean, Jim Hendler, and Fabien Gandon. “Counting and Sets in OWL.” In Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, 3rd ed., 353–89. ACM Books 33. Association for Computing Machinery, 2020. PDF.
    11,500 words
  3. Optional
    Hogan, Aidan. “Web Ontology Language.” In The Web of Data, 185–322. Springer, 2020. PDF.
    49,300 words

December 8
SHACL and OWL assignment due