Person registries and biographies are widely used to document and describe life stories
of historical people, with the aim of getting a better understanding of their personality,
actions, and motivations in history. In biography [
This paper shows how the prosopographical method can be used in practice in
Digital Humanities by presenting a tool and application based on the Linked Data (LD)
paradigm [
As a use case, a database about the United States Congress Legislators4,5 is used. We pulled and linked two different datasets: 1) a dataset of the members of the United States Congress and 2) a dataset based on ICPSR ID6 accompanying Congress numbers7, as a basis. It contains biographical records of 11 987 persons who served in the U.S. Congresses from the 1st (1789) to the 115th (2018) one. We converted and extracted the data (in CSV and YAML format8) into RDF, and developed a SPARQL compliant data service and an online application named U.S. Congress Prosopographer9 to complement both quantitative and qualitative inquiry in American political history. 4https://github.com/unitedstates/congress-legislators 5http://k7moa.com 6The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) ID number 7https://www.senate.gov/reference/Years to Congress.htm 8http://yaml.org/spec/1.2/spec.html 9https://semanticcomputing.github.io/congress-legislators
The target RDF data model for representing biographical records is based on the Norssi
biography model [
All basic biographical data (family name, gender, given name, etc.) are modeled using the schema.org namespace, and all the data relating to his or her career are in the domain namespace. The resources can be linked to external databases or services, such as DBpedia, Wikidata, Wikipedia, and Twitter, for more information.
The data is available as a Linked Open Data service at the Linked Data Finland
platform12 in an open SPARQL endpoint13 with resolvable URIs, using the W3C Linked
Data publishing principles and best practices [
As for prosopographical research, U.S. Congress Prosopographer provides a
macroscopic viewpoint in historical time scale following with a microscopic viewpoint of
individual Congress members (Fig. 1). The interface was implemented by extending
SPARQL Faceter [
b) Map visualization To understand the intellectual mobility of Congress members through the places of their birth and death, Angular Google Maps16 is used in the visualization to locate, map, and explain historical trends in geographical space.
c) Two Views of Statistical Visualizations To examine the data through structured charts, and to provide glanceable overviews of the temporal features, this page generate statistics in Google Chart diagrams17 based on the extracted filtering results.
d) Comparing Visualizations These visualizations allow the user to examine the similarities and differences between the Democratic and Republican parties. In these visualizations, all functions and visualizations used in a), b), and c) are implemented to identify and compare the properties of the two different target groups.
Besides this, every view enables investigation of individual legislator attributes in depth for biographical investigation. Use Case Examples The comparison visualizations can be used in different research studies. For example, it can be shown that during the Reconstruction era from the 38th through the 45th Congresses (1863–64 to 1877–78) there is a large difference in the locations of birth and death of the legislators (cf. Fig. 2 LEFT). Most legislators were born and died in the eastern side. However, the distribution reveals a further clear tendency during this period: while the Democrats have a longitudinal spreading, 14http://angularjs.org 15https://github.com/angular-slider/angularjs-slider 16http://angular-ui.github.io/angular-google-maps/ 17https://developers.google.com/chart/ Republicans remain in the Northeastern megalopolises. Another example is from the 84th through the 89th Congresses (1955–56 to 1965–66) when the federal government aimed to revitalize cities though funding urban renewal programs.18 During this period of time, the poor were displaced and suffered from the series of policies. However, comparing with the overall trend in longevity of service of legislators which continuously decreases (cf. Fig. 2 RIGHT upper part), there is a wide variation in the longevity during 1955–66 (cf. Fig. 2 RIGHT bottom part). This indicates that incumbent re-election rates were extremely high in both parties during this time, despite the fact that the social situation was very unstable. Hence, through revealing such correlated continuities and changes, these examples demonstrate how historical patterns correspond to biographical information and further intertwine with politics, economics, and historical knowledge. 4
U.S. Congress Prosopographer explores different ways to support prosopographical research. Its different types of visualization for target groups establish context and maintain orientation while revealing details also about the individuals. This combination of macro- and microscopic viewpoints offers both qualitative and quantitative understanding of the biographical and prosopographical aspects of the Congress legislators.
The idea of combining faceted search and visualizations has been applied, e.g., in ePistlarium19. However, this tool deals with epistolary data and is not based on Linked Data. The research of this paper stands unique in providing a comprehensive coverage of U.S. Congressional biography from its beginning until today through the dynamic integration of querying and visualizing Linked Data under one single system.