Reconciling a local OWC instance with GND

Maximilian Hindermann, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9337-4655, University of Basel

CC BY 4.0

0. Preamble

This document is best viewed on GitHub at https://github.com/MHindermann/owc-gnd-reconciliation.

1. Introduction

The Outline of World Cultures (OWC) is an ontology for cultures created by George P. Murdock [1]. It has since been refined and updated in various ways, most prominently by Yale University’s HRAF division as the subscription database eHRAF World Cultures [2]. The Museum der Kulturen Basel (MKB), however, uses a distinct instance of OWC that reflects the museum’s collection history, for example by vastly enriching OWC’s ontology with respect to modern Papua New Guinea. In this working paper, I will explore whether this local OWC instance (call it OWCM) can be reconciled with the Integrated Authority File (GND) [3] used by the Basel University Library (and all other Swiss German university libraries) for indexing.

2. OWCM input data

The OWCM data was supplied to me in form of three XLS(X) files. In what follows, I will briefly describe the content and structure of each file:

1. input/owcm_short contains the main geographical divisions (e.g., Asia) and their subdivisions (e.g., Korea). Each of these 250 entries has three data fields: a one or two-digit alphabetical code indicating the hierarchical level of the entry, a plaintext descriptor consisting of a few words, and a binary field indicating whether the entry was modified by the MKB.
2. input/owcm_full contains further lower-level divisions and is a superset of input/owcm_short. We can hence ignore input/owcm_short from now on. Each of the roughly 3000 entries has again three data fields: an alphanumerical code of various length and format indicating the hierarchical level of the entry, a plaintext descriptor ranging in scope from a few words to multiple sentences, and a binary changelog with the quirk that the actual change is indicated in the descriptor field by means of italics, or in some cases, added to the binary field itself.
3. input/owcm_index contains more than 10000 entries of entities that are classified according to input/owcm_full, using the same data fields.

The main takeaway from this analysis is that the input data needs be cleaned. More precisely, on a conceptual level, OWCM as provided in input/owcm_full is a thesaurus (i.e., a controlled vocabulary with a binary relation on the vocabulary interpreted as semantic hierarchy). However, on the level of implementation, it is not even a controlled vocabulary since it lacks the usual specifications. For example, the provided data fields are undefined and sometimes used inconsistently; the plaintext descriptor is of very low granularity; the hierarchy between entries is not made explicit. This problem can be amended by converting input/owcm_full into a SKOS instance [4]. This approach ties in nicely with the Basel University Library's strategy of collecting and making available as many thesauri, vocabularies and ontologies as possible in one place at BARTOC Skosmos [5]. In addition, having a SKOS instance of OWCM provides a clear framework for reconciling OWCM with GND.

3. OWCM SKOS converter

converter.py is a Python script to convert input/owcm_full into a Skosmos [6] compliant JSON-LD called skos/owcm_skos. The script is documented so I won't rehash the details here and instead focus on skos/owcm_skos. skos/owcm_skos has a preamble defining its namespace and a graph which consists of the OWCM concept scheme and all of its concepts. Let me describe some of the data fields of these concepts and explain how they relate to the data fields of input/owcm_full (i.e., code, descriptor, changelog):

1. uri: a URI of the form https://bartoc.org/ocwm/code intended to serve as its PID. By adding skos/owcm_skos to BARTOC Skosmos, the URI will turn into a URL.
2. prefLabel: the part of the descriptor that names the concept (e.g., Taiwan).
3. altLabel: the part of the descriptor that used to name the concept (e.g., Formosa); not yet implemented.
4. definition: the part of the descriptor that defines the concept.
5. historyNote: a copy of the descriptor.
6. changeNote: the change to the concept implemented by MKB as documented in changelog.
7. broader: the parent concept.
8. narrower: the child concept(s).

In short, the code is used to provide each concept with a PID and to build the hierarchy of concepts; the descriptor is split into the data fields prefLabel, altLabel, definition; and changelog is used to build changeNote.

4. Reconciling OWCM SKOS with GND

The GND provides a LOD API of its data that includes reconciliation for OpenRefine [7]. Reconciliation means that a OWCM concept from skos/owcm_skos is matched to a GND entry (see [8] for details on the matching process). A (partial) mapping between OWCM and GND based on these matches is deemed valuable since it would allow for an easier integration of the MKB's holdings into the catalogues (respectively discovery systems to employ New Librarian Speak) of other institutions. In what follows I will discuss naive and more informed reconciliation strategies and their respective challenges. The result of each reconciliation test is provided as CSV or XLSX as reconciled/owcm_gnd_naiveORinformed and can be reproduced by calling reconciled/owcm_naiveORinformed_history on skos/owcm_skos in OpenRefine.

4.1 Naive reconciliation

reconciled/owcm_gnd_naive is a reconciliation based on the single data field prefLabel without any restrictions to a GND datatype. The result has 1443 or 43% automatic (i.e., high confidence) matches. (Note that naive reconciliation with Wikidata results in less than 1% automatic matches.) However, even a cursory glance reveals quite a few (kinds of) false positives:

• Minor Asiatic Colonies is matched to GND's Minoer, the ancient Minoan civilization.
• 28 concepts that include the prefix modern (e.g., Modern Canada) are matched to Suite en style modern by composer Joseph Achron.

• Maritime Arabs is matched to a 16th century person called Arabs Sorsanus.

  Some of these errors might be avoided by excluding specific GND datatypes such as works of music or literature, or persons. Other errors are due to fact that OWCM is in English and the GND is in German and lacks English translations for many of its entries.

4.2 Informed reconciliation

reconciled/owcm_gnd_informed is still based on the single data field prefLabel but limited to the GND datatype PlaceOrGeographicName [9]. Recall is lower as compared to reconciled/owcm_gnd_naive, namely 731 or 22% automatic matches, but precision is increased. Nevertheless, false positives remain, for example:

• Historical Puerto Rico is matched to GND's Puerto Rico; the former refers to the political entity before the twentieth century, the latter to the state founded in 1952. Similar for Prehistoric South Arabia being matched to South Arabia, and so on.
• Bombay Tribes is matched to the city of Bombay. Other cases include Taichung Peasants being matched to the city of Taichung, or West Alaska Eskimo being matched to Alaska (West).

Most of these errors seem to be related to the scope of a concept. Perhaps they could be avoided be providing more context; this can be achieved by basing the reconciliation on more than one data field but has the downside of introducing a lot of noise. A more promising but also more technically challenging solution would be to take gather the context by reading out the parent or child concepts.

5. Outlook

So far I have provided the basis of a reconciliation of OWCM SKOS with GND. However, implementing this reconciliation requires further work. There are many errors and any proposed mapping would have to be checked by an expert in the field (I for one lack the domain specific knowledge in many cases). So I propose the following road map to move forward:

1. Compile a set of test concepts a with the help of an ethnographer to be used as benchmark.
2. Systematize the encountered errors and get a deeper understanding of the OpenRefine matching scores in order to check whether they can be adapted to the needs at hand.
3. See whether triangulation can be used to improve matching quality by employing Cocoda [10].

Finally, in case of a positive result and hence a (partial) reconciliation of OWCM SKOS with GND, this result should again be Skosmos compliant JSON-LD or similar.

6. References

[1] Murdock, George P. (1969): Outline of World Cultures, 3rd revised edition. New Haven, Conn.: HRAF Press.
[2] https://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/ehrafe/
[3] https://www.dnb.de/DE/Professionell/Standardisierung/GND/gnd_node.html
[4] https://www.w3.org/TR/skos-reference/
[5] https://bartoc-skosmos.unibas.ch
[6] Suominen, O. et al. (2015): Publishing SKOS vocabularies with Skosmos. Manuscript submitted for review.
[7] http://lobid.org/gnd/reconcile
[8] https://github.com/OpenRefine/OpenRefine/wiki/Reconciliation
[9] https://d-nb.info/standards/elementset/gnd
[10] https://coli-conc.gbv.de/cocoda/