Date: Tuesday May 12, 2026 - 16:30–18:00 BST = 17:30–19:00 CEST

Convenors: Daniele Fusi (Ca' Foscari University of Venice), Paolo Monella (Kore University of Enna)

Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/live/_t0VarN-lG0?si=YdK3Jbv3MD-Huhay

Slides: Slides session 4

The lesson includes two parts: (1) a theoretical introduction to LOD and (2) a hands-on activity.

1. The introduction to LOD focuses on the conceptual presentation of the essential principles under this umbrella definition. Data modeling, at the core of Digital Humanities, is here designed for publishing and integration, and is the natural extension of structured data distribution practices which contributed to reshaping the web itself. A web of data, rather than a web of hypertexts (1.0) or applications (2.0), is the target of a universal global model, firmly rooted in existing web technologies, but designed for the highest level of atomic distribution and conceptual abstraction, along with the long-standing separation of content and presentations.

2. In the practical part of the lesson, with the help of companion software developed for the lesson, attendants enrich a TEI XML file with the incipit of Vergil's Aeneis by including references to LOD entities representing people and places, a typical real-world application scenario for LOD technologies. Course attendants find out LOD URIs for entities such as Iuno and Troia on DBPedia and mark their names in Virgil's text with the relevant TEI markup, pointing to those URIs. Then they use the companion software to generate its HTML visualization, to pull data about those entities from the Semantic Web (namely, from DBPedia) and to visualize that data.

• Berners-Lee T., Weaving the Web, Harper 1999
• Blaney J., Introduction to the Principles of Linked Open Data, Programming Historian 6, 2017, https://doi.org/10.46430/phen0068

• Fantoli M., Boano V. I., de Graaf E., Pellizzari di San Girolamo C. C., Wikidata as a Knowledge Base for People of the Greco-Roman World, Journal of Open Humanities Data 12, 2026, https://doi.org/10.5334/johd.457
• Cayless H. A., Sustaining Linked Ancient World Data, in Digital Classical Philology: Ancient Greek and Latin in the Digital Revolution, ed. by Monica Berti, De Gruyter Saur 2019, pp. 35-50, https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110599572-004

• Wood D., Zaidman M., Ruth L., Hausenblas M., Linked Data: Structured data on the Web (foreword by Tim Berners-Lee), Manning 2014
• Allemang D., Hendler J., Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist: Effective Modeling in RDFS and OWL, Morgan Kaufmann 2011
• Passin Th. B., Explorer’s Guide to the Semantic Web, Manning 2004

• Elliott Th., Heath S., Muccigrosso J. (ed.), Current Practice in Linked Open Data for the Ancient World, ISAW Papers 7, 2014, http://doi.org/2333.1/gxd256w7

• Tools online
  • Companion software on D. Fusi's website
  • Recogito NER
• General LOD resources
  • https://www.dbpedia.org/
  • https://www.wikidata.org/
  • https://lod-cloud.net/
• Specific on Digital Classics
  • https://pelagios.org/
  • https://github.com/lawdi
  • https://ics.sas.ac.uk/ics-digital/linked-open-data
  • LAWD Cataloque (on a Google Docs spreadsheet)

Use the top-right 'download raw file' button to download the files:

1. 'Incomplete' version of the TEI XML file
2. 'Complete' version

You start from a TEI XML file of the incipit of the Aeneid, in which Troy, Italy, the shores of Lavinium and Juno (person) are mentioned, but in which the semantic markup regarding places and people is incomplete. In step 1 we simply download and inspect this file.

This is the base file that you will connect with LOD entities in the next steps. The scenario we are mimicking is a very common one: imagine that, in your research project, you have a TEI-encoded text that you want to enrich with semantic markup.

1. Download the 'incomplete' version of the TEI XML file
   • Use the top-right 'download raw file' button
2. Save the file in a folder of your computer where you will be able to find it later
3. Open it with your XML editor to check if the download worked
4. Keep it open in your XML editor, for the next step

No problem: the website already has a working TEI XML file, so you don't really have to upload your one.

You find out the LOD URIs for:

So, in the next steps, you can replace the "§" placeholders with the relevant URIs in the TEI XML file (thus linking our 'internal' semantic markup to the Semantic Web).

1. Use the search function in https://lookup.dbpedia.org/
   • You will see that DBPedia URIs look like http://dbpedia.org/resource/Troy

1. Go to https://dbpedia.org/sparql
2. Paste a SPARQL query like this, after replacing Troy with the 'label' you are searching, and hit 'Execute Query':

SELECT ?uri ?label
WHERE {
?uri rdfs:label ?label .
filter(?label="Troy"@en)
}

1. Use a NER (Named Entity Recognition) tool such as Recogito
2. Register by creating a free account, then login
3. Upload your TEI XML document: click on 'New' (top left)
4. Double click on the file in the list to open it
5. Click on highlighted words/phrases to review/edit the semantic markup
   • ...Recogito fails to recognize our entities. Why?
6. Click on the 'Search' button and search for a lemmatized/normalized form of the name (e.g.: Troiae → Troia or Troy; Laviniaque → Lavinium)
7. Once finished, click on the 'Download' button on the top horizontal menu and choose 'TEI/XML' as format (last row, 'Annotated document / TEI / TEI/XML')
8. Open the downloaded TEI file with your XML editor: is the ref markup strategy the same of our TEI file?

Note: We won't be using the TEI file you downloaded from Recogito for the rest of this exercise, because it is encoded differently. We will continue using our aen_incomplete.xml file.

Find the relevant URIs in the How to do it section of the next step and skip to it.

Add the relevant URIs to your TEI markup ( and elements).

So the semantic markup of your TEI XML file is actually linked to the Semantic Web.

1. Find the §020 Insert persons and the §030 Insert places bookmarks in the 'incomplete' TEI XML file (aen_incomplete.xml)
2. Replace the "§" placeholders (e. g the "§" in §) with the relevant LOD URIs, i.e.:

Note: DBPedia URIs should start with http, not with https, and include resource, not page. For example, http://dbpedia.org/resource/Italy is OK, but https://dbpedia.org/page/Italy is not.

• Download the 'complete' version of the TEI XML file, in which all URIs have been included, so you are ready for the next steps
  • Use the top-right 'download raw file' button
  • Please note in which folder you are downloading this file. You can replace the previous version and resume work from the 'complete' file for the next steps

Connect the and the elements in the TEI to the and elements in the TEI .

Because this is the TEI Guidelines strategy: the points to the to , and the latter inlcudes the LOD URIs.

1. Find the §040 bookmark in the 'incomplete' TEI XML file (aen_incomplete.xml)
2. Replace the "§" placeholders (e. g the "§" in Troiae) with pointers to the xml:id of the relevant or in the (e.g. pl_troia for Troy). Remember that in XML pointers start with #, so the result for Troy should look like Troiae.