This paper makes new suggestions for rethinking archival finding aids by means of linked open data. It does so by outlining some features of a conceptual model for writers' archives developed for the Digital Library of the Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies of the University of Bologna. The model, extending CIDOC-CRM/LRMoo, allows for the representation of complex collections of interrelationships between heterogeneous archival entities, especially texts. It also adopts named graphs as a way of enriching the finding aid with additional and possibly competing interpretations by researchers. Through the case study of Giuseppe Raimondi's archive, the paper suggests how the adoption of linked open data can broaden the role of the digital finding aid to serve as a platform for archival and textual research.
In his Introduction to Archival Science, Thomassen describes research on archives
as “research on relations”[
Knowledge graphs have only recently been gathering attention as a way of
publishing archives on the web. Compared to that of tree hierarchies, the data
structure of knowledge graphs supports the creation of representations that can
express higher orders of archival complexity. The descriptive potential of
knowledge graphs is grounded on the semantic web architecture, which adopts the
Resource Description Framework (RDF) as its base, interoperable data model
to convey information through semantic statements taking the form of
subjectpredicate-object expressions (see [
The introduction of knowledge graphs into archival practice, however, does not merely provide archival practitioners with new technological tools but also challenges traditional approaches to archival representation both methodologically and conceptually. From a methodological point of view, the use of knowledge graphs as a method for archival representation prompts us to rethink the structure and organization of the archive towards a shift from neat hierarchies of records to fluid networks of logical interdependencies that can be arranged and rearranged into new representations. The semantic range of such interdependencies is virtually infinite, thanks to the possibility of combining predicates from di↵erent ontologies within a single graph and defining new predicates as needed.
From a conceptual point of view, reconfiguring the finding aid as a
knowledge graph broadens its role in the context of textual research by allowing
multiple interpretations by archivists and researchers to be incorporated into the
archival representation as complex collections of interrelationships between
heterogeneous entities (see [
Our argument stems from a project undertaken by the Department of
Classical Philology and Italian Studies (FICLIT)[
Giuseppe Raimondi (Bologna, 1898-1985) was an Italian writer. In the immediate aftermath of WWI, in 1918, he founded the literary journal La Raccolta, which published papers by European authors such as Vincenzo Cardarelli, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Guillaume Apollinaire and Blaise Cendrars, many of whom Raimondi met for the first time during the war. The archive, held at FICLIT, provides an example of what we might call ‘multiple sedimentation’: it contains heterogeneous material, both as to what regards carriers (notebooks, loose papers, albums, newspaper clippings, printed volumes) and document types (letters, drafts, notes, newspaper and journal articles, illustrated postcards, drawings, photographs).
Research on the archive have highlighted that the records it comprises are
highly interconnected with one another as well as with material from other
collections, and that the nature of such interrelations is heterogeneous. Consider,
for example, a manuscript notebook, a newspaper article and a printed volume
containing di↵erent versions of a text, possibly with internal corrections; these
documents and their relationships span across various cultural heritage areas
such as library, archival, museum and textual studies.4
3 See [
Experiments with CIDOC CRM as a base ontology for representing archival
information have already proved fruitful for demonstrating how classes and
properties from CIDOC CRM could also be leveraged for the archival domain (see
[
The primary goal of our project is to define a conceptual model that allows for the granular representation of complex interrelationships between heterogeneous documents and texts, such as those described above, within the finding aid. The model, extending CIDOC-CRM and LRMoo (formerly FRBRoo), leverages named graphs to enrich the finding aid with multiple and possibly competing readings by archivists and researchers.7 The section that follows presents selected features of the model through a practical example focusing on the representation of intertextual relationships as reconstructed by subsequent users-researchers. 2
Textual Research in the Finding Aid: An Example Una forca per il poeta Fran¸cois Villon / [Giuseppe Raimondi]. - 1976. - 1 quaderno (7 p. ms., di cui alcune numerate irregolarmente, su 10 c.) ; 21 cm. ((In cop., di altra mano, anche: (Gelo invernale e nostalgia di legna accesa) Il giorno 7.6.76; I dattiloscritti sono inseriti ne “I tetti sulla citta`”; a c. [3v]: 24.5.1976; a c. [5v]: 3 luglio 1976. - Contiene anche: A proposito di tegole, di tetti e di fantasmi. – Ms.8 This archival note, taken from the existing finding aid of the Giuseppe Raimondi Archive, describes one of Raimondi’s manuscript notebooks.9 The note reports four distinct titles: Una forca per il poeta Fran¸cois Villon (from now on T1), Gelo invernale e nostalgia di legna accesa (T2), I tetti sulla citt`a (T3) and A proposito di tegole, di tetti e di fantasmi (T4). However, the note does not specify which texts are actually contained in the notebook nor the relationships between them, to the detriment of users and researchers. The description also includes three full dates, but they are not explicitly attributed to the corresponding texts.
Actually, the notebook only contains two of the mentioned texts, T1 (dated
24 May 1976) and T4 (3 July 1976). Both became part of T3, a collection of
5 Refer to [
As anticipated above, our model, of which we only provide a brief account, adopts CIDOC-CRM as a basis for representing archival documents and order. Figure 1 and Figure 2 show a graphical representation of the archivist’s base description of the notebook (the graph is split into two parts for better reading). The following prefixes apply to all figures: @base <https://w3id.org/ficlitdl/> . @prefix fdlo: <https://w3id.org/ficlitdl/ontology/> . @prefix crm: <https://w3id.org/ficlitdl/ontology/crm/> . @prefix lrmoo: <https://w3id.org/ficlitdl/ontology/lrmoo/> . @prefix pro: <http://purl.org/spar/pro/> . @prefix rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#> . @prefix np: <http://www.nanopub.org/nschema#> .
CIDOC-CRM is the best candidate for integrating di↵erent conceptualizations into one model because it is event-based and already compatible with LRMoo. The notebook is modelled as an instance of E22 Human-Made Object that carries an F2 Expression incorporating two texts, T1 and T4 (Fig. 1, centre). Because it contains two distinct texts, the notebook is categorised both as a ‘notebook’ and as an archival ‘file’ through the P2 has type property (Fig. 1, top left). The notebook forms part of the archival unit, “QUADERNI.1 1976”, which is also an instance of E22.
One crucial feature of our model is that each physical document is tied to
a IIIF manifest [
The creation of the notebook is modelled as an instance of F28 Expression
Creation, linked to a specific date and technique (handwriting). The role of
author is assigned to Giuseppe Raimondi using the Publishing Role Ontology
(PRO) model, which allows for the reification of roles in such a way that each
role is always linked to a specific context [
The E13 Attribute Assignment class is used to model authorship attribution. The attribute assigned is the Role In Time, and the assignee is Giuseppe Raimondi. The agent responsible for the attribution (in this case an institution rather than an individual) and the time of attribution are linked to the instance of E13 (Fig. 1, bottom right). 2.2
Among the objectives of our model is to support the incorporation of
subsequent scholarly interpretations within the finding aid. Figure 3 shows a graph
of statements, modelled according to LRMoo, that reconstructs the
relationships between T1, T2 and T3 as established by a researcher analysing Giuseppe
Raimondi’s literary production. All three texts are modelled as instances of F2
Expression realizing the same work. The texts are linked to their carriers: T1
is carried by the notebook, while T3 is carried by multiple printed volumes
available in the personal archives of Giuseppe Raimondi, Ezio Raimondi and
Clemente Mazzotta. Because the volumes are from di↵erent archival collections,
connecting them within the finding aid represents a fundamental step towards
dismantling archival data siloes (see [
Additional relationships inferred by the reasoner on the basis of our ontology are displayed in blue. These relationships, FDLP2 has variant expression and FDLP3 is related by expression to, automatically link together the alternate versions of a text and the physical documents containing such versions to facilitate search and retrieval.
The graph only shows a subset of possible text-to-text connections.
Connections at a deeper level are also possible, such as fragment-to-fragment
connections describing authorial changes from one version to another (fragments can
be modelled as instances of E90 Symbolic Object belonging to an expression,
while ontologies such as the Critical Apparatus Ontology (CAO) provide
useful properties for the representation of corrections) [
In order to accommodate multiple perspectives in the finding aid, all collections of statements (in the case discussed above, there are two distinct graphs, the archivist’s and the researcher’s) must be associated with provenance information. This allows the archival knowledge base to describe not only the archive but also the process of archival representation and to integrate more collections of statements over time.
Provenance information is modelled according to the Nanopublication
framework [
Concluding Remarks Even in the digital environment, the finding aid remains a key tool for discovery and access. Its reconfiguration as an archival knowledge base has the potential to transform the finding aid into an expanding research platform where complex interrelationships between heterogeneous entities can be explicitly represented.
The primary goal of the project described in this paper is to define a conceptual model for representing writers’ archives that allow for the expression of such interrelationships, with a special focus on connecting texts. Thanks to the use of named graphs, and nanopublications in particular, the model supports the ongoing enrichment of the digital finding aid with subsequent scholarly reconstructions of the context(s) characterizing the records.
Using a practical example from the Giuseppe Raimondi Archive, this contribution attempted to show how the use of linked open data, in conjunction with event-based and provenance-centric descriptions, can broaden the role of the digital finding aid and the archive it represents, transforming it into an ever-expanding platform for archival and textual research.