2016
Doctoral thesis
Open Access
An Ontology for Narratives
Bartalesi Lenzi V.
One of the main problems of the current Digital Libraries (DLs) is the limitation of the informative services offered to the user who aims at discovering the resources of the DL by queries in natural language. Indeed, all DLs provide simple search functionalities that return a ranked list of their resources. No semantic relation among the returned objects is usually reported that could help the user to obtain a more complete knowledge on the subject of the search. The introduction of the Semantic Web, and in particular of the Linked Data, has the potential of improving the search functionalities of DLs. In this context, the long-term aim of this thesis has been to introduce the narrative as new first-class search functionality. As output of a query, the envisaged new search functionality should not only return a list of objects but it should also present one or more narratives, composed of events that are linked to the objects of the existing libraries (e.g. Europeana) and are endowed with a set of semantic relations connecting these events into a meaningful semantic network. As a necessary step towards this direction, the thesis presents an ontology for representing narratives, along with a tool for the construction of narratives based on the ontology. Moreover, it has used to the tool for evaluating the ontology in the context of an experiment centred on the biography of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri, the major Italian poet of the late Middle Ages. More specifically: - An overview of the related works developed in the Semantic Web field and in Narratology, and especially in its sub branch named Computational Narratology was reported. The basic principles of Narratology and Computational Narratology have been reviewed along with the study of the Artificial Intelligence literature, especially of the Event Calculus theory, in order to identify the formal components of narratives. - A conceptualization of narratives has been developed, based on notions derived from narratology and Artificial Intelligence. According to this conceptualization, a narrative consists of a fabula, i.e. the events of a story in chronologically ordered, and several narrations of this fabula (plots), linked to the fabula by an event association relation. A mathematical expression of the conceptualization has been given, in order to provide a characterization of the conceptualization as clear and as precise as possible, also to be used as a basis for the subsequent development of an ontology of narratives, encoded in OWL. The proposed conceptualization has been validated by expressing it into an existing ontology, the CIDOC CRM, and by endowing it with provenance knowledge, also expressed in a derivation of the CRM, named CRMinf. This expression has been used in the validation experiment, consisting in the modelling a narrative of the biography of Dante Alighieri, provided by a biographer who has scientifically supported this research. - The population of the created ontology has been performed by means of a semiautomatic approach implemented by a tool for the construction of narratives which obey the ontology. This tool retrieves and assigns URIs to the instances of the classes of the ontology using Wikidata as external resource and also facilitates the construction and contextualization of events, and their linking to form the fabulae of narratives. - Finally, a qualitative validation of the developed ontology has been carried out. This validation has regarded the evaluation of: (i) the representational adequacy of the ontology by a Dante Alighieri's expert; (ii) the effectiveness of the narrative building tool; (iii) the satisfaction of the users' requirements defined at the beginning of the study. To prove the last point, initial requirements representing pre-requisites of this work have been satisfied by demonstrating that a SPARQL query can be always built to extract the requested information from the knowledge base embodying the narrative.Project(s): PARTHENOS
Bartalesi Lenzi V.
One of the main problems of the current Digital Libraries (DLs) is the limitation of the informative services offered to the user who aims at discovering the resources of the DL by queries in natural language. Indeed, all DLs provide simple search functionalities that return a ranked list of their resources. No semantic relation among the returned objects is usually reported that could help the user to obtain a more complete knowledge on the subject of the search. The introduction of the Semantic Web, and in particular of the Linked Data, has the potential of improving the search functionalities of DLs. In this context, the long-term aim of this thesis has been to introduce the narrative as new first-class search functionality. As output of a query, the envisaged new search functionality should not only return a list of objects but it should also present one or more narratives, composed of events that are linked to the objects of the existing libraries (e.g. Europeana) and are endowed with a set of semantic relations connecting these events into a meaningful semantic network. As a necessary step towards this direction, the thesis presents an ontology for representing narratives, along with a tool for the construction of narratives based on the ontology. Moreover, it has used to the tool for evaluating the ontology in the context of an experiment centred on the biography of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri, the major Italian poet of the late Middle Ages. More specifically: - An overview of the related works developed in the Semantic Web field and in Narratology, and especially in its sub branch named Computational Narratology was reported. The basic principles of Narratology and Computational Narratology have been reviewed along with the study of the Artificial Intelligence literature, especially of the Event Calculus theory, in order to identify the formal components of narratives. - A conceptualization of narratives has been developed, based on notions derived from narratology and Artificial Intelligence. According to this conceptualization, a narrative consists of a fabula, i.e. the events of a story in chronologically ordered, and several narrations of this fabula (plots), linked to the fabula by an event association relation. A mathematical expression of the conceptualization has been given, in order to provide a characterization of the conceptualization as clear and as precise as possible, also to be used as a basis for the subsequent development of an ontology of narratives, encoded in OWL. The proposed conceptualization has been validated by expressing it into an existing ontology, the CIDOC CRM, and by endowing it with provenance knowledge, also expressed in a derivation of the CRM, named CRMinf. This expression has been used in the validation experiment, consisting in the modelling a narrative of the biography of Dante Alighieri, provided by a biographer who has scientifically supported this research. - The population of the created ontology has been performed by means of a semiautomatic approach implemented by a tool for the construction of narratives which obey the ontology. This tool retrieves and assigns URIs to the instances of the classes of the ontology using Wikidata as external resource and also facilitates the construction and contextualization of events, and their linking to form the fabulae of narratives. - Finally, a qualitative validation of the developed ontology has been carried out. This validation has regarded the evaluation of: (i) the representational adequacy of the ontology by a Dante Alighieri's expert; (ii) the effectiveness of the narrative building tool; (iii) the satisfaction of the users' requirements defined at the beginning of the study. To prove the last point, initial requirements representing pre-requisites of this work have been satisfied by demonstrating that a SPARQL query can be always built to extract the requested information from the knowledge base embodying the narrative.Project(s): PARTHENOS
See at:
etd.adm.unipi.it 
| ISTI Repository | CNR ExploRA
2023
Contribution to conference
Open Access
Creating and visualising semantic story maps
Bartalesi V.
A narrative is a conceptual basis of collective human understanding. Humans use stories to represent characters' intentions, feelings and the attributes of objects, and events. A widely-held thesis in psychology to justify the centrality of narrative in human life is that humans make sense of reality by structuring events into narratives. Therefore, narratives are central to human activity in cultural, scientic, and social areas. Story maps are computer science realizations of narratives based on maps. They are online interactive maps enriched with text, pictures, videos, and other multimedia information, whose aim is to tell a story over a territory. This talk presents a semi-automatic workow that, using a CRM-based ontology and the Semantic Web technologies, produces semantic narratives in the form of story maps (and timelines as an alternative representation) from textual documents. An expert user rst assembles one territory-contextual document containing text and images. Then, automatic processes use natural language processing and Wikidata services to (i) extract entities and geospatial points of interest associated with the territory, (ii) assemble a logically-ordered sequence of events that constitute the narrative, enriched with entities and images, and (iii) openly publish online semantic story maps and an interoperable Linked Open Data-compliant knowledge base for event exploration and inter-story correlation analyses. Once the story maps are published, the users can review them through a user-friendly web tool. Overall, our workow complies with Open Science directives of open publication and multi-discipline support and is appropriate to convey "information going beyond the map" to scientists and the large public. As demonstrations, the talk will show workow-produced story maps to represent (i) 23 European rural areas across 16 countries, their value chains and territories, (ii) a Medieval journey, (iii) the history of the legends, biological investigations, and AI-based modelling for habitat discovery of the giant squid Architeuthis dux.Source: Text2Story 2023 - Sixth Workshop on Narrative Extraction From Texts, pp. 3–4, Dublin, Ireland, 02/04/2023
Bartalesi V.
A narrative is a conceptual basis of collective human understanding. Humans use stories to represent characters' intentions, feelings and the attributes of objects, and events. A widely-held thesis in psychology to justify the centrality of narrative in human life is that humans make sense of reality by structuring events into narratives. Therefore, narratives are central to human activity in cultural, scientic, and social areas. Story maps are computer science realizations of narratives based on maps. They are online interactive maps enriched with text, pictures, videos, and other multimedia information, whose aim is to tell a story over a territory. This talk presents a semi-automatic workow that, using a CRM-based ontology and the Semantic Web technologies, produces semantic narratives in the form of story maps (and timelines as an alternative representation) from textual documents. An expert user rst assembles one territory-contextual document containing text and images. Then, automatic processes use natural language processing and Wikidata services to (i) extract entities and geospatial points of interest associated with the territory, (ii) assemble a logically-ordered sequence of events that constitute the narrative, enriched with entities and images, and (iii) openly publish online semantic story maps and an interoperable Linked Open Data-compliant knowledge base for event exploration and inter-story correlation analyses. Once the story maps are published, the users can review them through a user-friendly web tool. Overall, our workow complies with Open Science directives of open publication and multi-discipline support and is appropriate to convey "information going beyond the map" to scientists and the large public. As demonstrations, the talk will show workow-produced story maps to represent (i) 23 European rural areas across 16 countries, their value chains and territories, (ii) a Medieval journey, (iii) the history of the legends, biological investigations, and AI-based modelling for habitat discovery of the giant squid Architeuthis dux.Source: Text2Story 2023 - Sixth Workshop on Narrative Extraction From Texts, pp. 3–4, Dublin, Ireland, 02/04/2023
See at:
ceur-ws.org | ISTI Repository | CNR ExploRA
2013
Conference article
Restricted
Investigating an accessible and usable epub book via VoiceOver: a case study
Bartalesi Lenzi V., Leporini B.
In this paper we investigate the opportunities and limitations for blind and visually impaired people when reading an ePub document via Voice-Over for mobile devices. The ePub format is based on an (x)html structure; organizing and handling its source code is therefore very important in order to guarantee satisfactory interaction with the eBook. In this work we analyze the main accessibility and usability issues when interacting with an ePub document via VoiceOver, in order to evaluate possible solutions to source code difficulties. We have considered several accessibility requirements for the use of eBooks in order to focus on the potential technical solutions which were evaluated. From this perspective, we considered two eBooks in order to apply our methodology. Comments and suggestions were provided by eight blind users who evaluated the eBooks via iPhone and iPad devices.Source: Human Factors in Computing and Informatics. First International Conference, pp. 272–283, Maribor, Slovenia, 1-3 July 2013
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-39062-3_17
Metrics:
Bartalesi Lenzi V., Leporini B.
In this paper we investigate the opportunities and limitations for blind and visually impaired people when reading an ePub document via Voice-Over for mobile devices. The ePub format is based on an (x)html structure; organizing and handling its source code is therefore very important in order to guarantee satisfactory interaction with the eBook. In this work we analyze the main accessibility and usability issues when interacting with an ePub document via VoiceOver, in order to evaluate possible solutions to source code difficulties. We have considered several accessibility requirements for the use of eBooks in order to focus on the potential technical solutions which were evaluated. From this perspective, we considered two eBooks in order to apply our methodology. Comments and suggestions were provided by eight blind users who evaluated the eBooks via iPhone and iPad devices.Source: Human Factors in Computing and Informatics. First International Conference, pp. 272–283, Maribor, Slovenia, 1-3 July 2013
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-39062-3_17
Metrics:
See at:
doi.org 
| link.springer.com | CNR ExploRA
2014
Conference article
Restricted
Steps towards enhancing the user experience in accessing digital libraries
Meghini C., Bartalesi V.
The advent of the Web has driven cultural institutions to publish digital representations of their assets online. The main problem of the cultural Web sites, and of their back-end Digital Libraries (DLs), is the limitation of the informative services offered to the user. DLs offer simple search functionalities which return a list of the information objects contained in the DL. No semantic relation among the returned objects is usually reported which can help the user in obtaining a more complete knowledge on the subject of the research. The introduction of the Semantic Web, and in particular of the Linked Data, has the potential of improving the search functionalities of DLs. Many cultural institutions have represented their metadata into formal descriptions encoded by means of formal languages such as RDF and OWL. Our study aims at exploiting the representations of the semantics of the objects contained in the new generation DLs in the in order to introduce a new search functionality. As output of a query, the new search functionality does not return just a list of objects but it presents a narrative, based on the objects of the library that are relevant to the query and on a set of semantic relations that connect these objects into something meaningful to the user. The paper presents the first theoretical achievements on a model for representing narratives. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.Source: HCII 2014 - Human Interface and the Management of Information. Information and Knowledge in Applications and Services. 16th International Conference, pp. 555–566, Heraklion, Crete, Greece, 22-27 June 2014
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-07863-2_53
Metrics:
Meghini C., Bartalesi V.
The advent of the Web has driven cultural institutions to publish digital representations of their assets online. The main problem of the cultural Web sites, and of their back-end Digital Libraries (DLs), is the limitation of the informative services offered to the user. DLs offer simple search functionalities which return a list of the information objects contained in the DL. No semantic relation among the returned objects is usually reported which can help the user in obtaining a more complete knowledge on the subject of the research. The introduction of the Semantic Web, and in particular of the Linked Data, has the potential of improving the search functionalities of DLs. Many cultural institutions have represented their metadata into formal descriptions encoded by means of formal languages such as RDF and OWL. Our study aims at exploiting the representations of the semantics of the objects contained in the new generation DLs in the in order to introduce a new search functionality. As output of a query, the new search functionality does not return just a list of objects but it presents a narrative, based on the objects of the library that are relevant to the query and on a set of semantic relations that connect these objects into something meaningful to the user. The paper presents the first theoretical achievements on a model for representing narratives. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.Source: HCII 2014 - Human Interface and the Management of Information. Information and Knowledge in Applications and Services. 16th International Conference, pp. 555–566, Heraklion, Crete, Greece, 22-27 June 2014
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-07863-2_53
Metrics:
See at:
doi.org | www.scopus.com | CNR ExploRA
2015
Conference article
Restricted
An enriched ePub eBook for screen reader users
Bartalesi Lenzi V., Leporini B.
Our study aims at obtaining ePub accessibility for all, including screen reader users. Since an ePub document is made up of several (X)HTML files, we analysed and worked with those (X)HTML tags that affect the blind user's experience in the reading. As a case study we developed an "enriched" ePub book which applies technical solutions (i.e. tags and attributes) with the purpose to overcome the accessibility and usability issues observed when interacting via screen reader. In this work we present the results collected through an online survey conducted with 25 users to evaluate the "enriched" ePub compared with the original PDF format in terms of accessibility and usability. Positive responses about the proposed solutions emerged from the survey: the easy access to the table of content, to the images, to the text and also the ease of navigation. In short, 88 % of the users preferred the ePub format instead of the PDF. This confirms that quite simple technical solutions can really improve the reading experience for not only visually impaired people. The results from the survey also showed accessibility issues and limitations of the screen readers and eBook reader software which still exist.Source: UAHCI 2015 - Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction. Access to Today's Technologies. 9th International Conference, pp. 375–386, Los Angeles, CA, USA, 2-7 August 2015
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-20678-3_36
Metrics:
Bartalesi Lenzi V., Leporini B.
Our study aims at obtaining ePub accessibility for all, including screen reader users. Since an ePub document is made up of several (X)HTML files, we analysed and worked with those (X)HTML tags that affect the blind user's experience in the reading. As a case study we developed an "enriched" ePub book which applies technical solutions (i.e. tags and attributes) with the purpose to overcome the accessibility and usability issues observed when interacting via screen reader. In this work we present the results collected through an online survey conducted with 25 users to evaluate the "enriched" ePub compared with the original PDF format in terms of accessibility and usability. Positive responses about the proposed solutions emerged from the survey: the easy access to the table of content, to the images, to the text and also the ease of navigation. In short, 88 % of the users preferred the ePub format instead of the PDF. This confirms that quite simple technical solutions can really improve the reading experience for not only visually impaired people. The results from the survey also showed accessibility issues and limitations of the screen readers and eBook reader software which still exist.Source: UAHCI 2015 - Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction. Access to Today's Technologies. 9th International Conference, pp. 375–386, Los Angeles, CA, USA, 2-7 August 2015
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-20678-3_36
Metrics:
See at:
doi.org | link.springer.com | CNR ExploRA
2015
Report
Unknown
Knowledge acquisition on Dante Alighieri's works
Locuratolo E. I., Bartalesi Lenzi V.
The approach followed for the identification and the implementation of visualization diagrams able to support the knowledge acquisition on Dante's works is described. Two high level structures and an implementation model are proposed. An example of citation histogram is given; one of its possible refinements is considered. The article is part of the Towards a Digital Dante Encyclopedia, a three-year Italian National Project which aims to build a digital library endowed with services to support scholars in creating, evolving and consulting an encyclopedia on Dante Alighieri and on his works.Source: ISTI Technical reports, 2015
Locuratolo E. I., Bartalesi Lenzi V.
The approach followed for the identification and the implementation of visualization diagrams able to support the knowledge acquisition on Dante's works is described. Two high level structures and an implementation model are proposed. An example of citation histogram is given; one of its possible refinements is considered. The article is part of the Towards a Digital Dante Encyclopedia, a three-year Italian National Project which aims to build a digital library endowed with services to support scholars in creating, evolving and consulting an encyclopedia on Dante Alighieri and on his works.Source: ISTI Technical reports, 2015
See at: CNR ExploRA
2015
Journal article
Open Access
Towards a semantic network of Dante's works and their contextual knowledge
Bartalesi Lenzi V., Meghini C., Andriani P., Tavoni M.
We present the achievements of the 'Towards a Digital Dante Encyclopaedia' project, a 3-year Italian National Research Project that aims at building a digital library endowed with services supporting scholars in creating, evolving, and consulting a digital encyclopaedia of Dante Alighieri and his works. Our main goal is to represent and visualize the knowledge of the primary sources that Dante refers to in his works. Currently, this information is scattered in many books, making it difficult to systematically overview the culture of Dante in order to obtain a well-founded perception of how this culture was gradually constructed over time. We describe a semantic representation of the involved texts and knowledge based on the Semantic Web languages. The representation is freely available as an XML document, and it can be easily acquired, e.g. by other researchers in order to extend the representation with additional texts and knowledge. We also present a web application that allows users to extract and display these texts and knowledge in the form of charts and tables. In particular, the application supports the visualization of the data related to the primary sources according to different parameters (e.g. in chronological order, by author, by work). Furthermore, it allows exploring the dynamics of the multi-faceted culture of Dante in relation to the diverse and often conflicting stages of his biography.Source: Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 30_suppl.1 (2015): i28–i35. doi:10.1093/llc/fqv044
DOI: 10.1093/llc/fqv044
Metrics:
Bartalesi Lenzi V., Meghini C., Andriani P., Tavoni M.
We present the achievements of the 'Towards a Digital Dante Encyclopaedia' project, a 3-year Italian National Research Project that aims at building a digital library endowed with services supporting scholars in creating, evolving, and consulting a digital encyclopaedia of Dante Alighieri and his works. Our main goal is to represent and visualize the knowledge of the primary sources that Dante refers to in his works. Currently, this information is scattered in many books, making it difficult to systematically overview the culture of Dante in order to obtain a well-founded perception of how this culture was gradually constructed over time. We describe a semantic representation of the involved texts and knowledge based on the Semantic Web languages. The representation is freely available as an XML document, and it can be easily acquired, e.g. by other researchers in order to extend the representation with additional texts and knowledge. We also present a web application that allows users to extract and display these texts and knowledge in the form of charts and tables. In particular, the application supports the visualization of the data related to the primary sources according to different parameters (e.g. in chronological order, by author, by work). Furthermore, it allows exploring the dynamics of the multi-faceted culture of Dante in relation to the diverse and often conflicting stages of his biography.Source: Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 30_suppl.1 (2015): i28–i35. doi:10.1093/llc/fqv044
DOI: 10.1093/llc/fqv044
Metrics:
See at:
Digital Scholarship in the Humanities | ISTI Repository | Digital Scholarship in the Humanities | dsh.oxfordjournals.org | CNR ExploRA
2017
Journal article
Open Access
Using an ontology for representing the knowledge on literary texts: the Dante Alighieri case study
Bartalesi Lenzi V., Meghini C.
This paper describes a digital library developed within the "Towards a Digital Dante Encyclopaedia" project, a three years Italian National Research Project that aims at building services supporting scholars in creating, evolving and consulting a digital encyclopaedia of Dante Alighieri's works. The digital library is based on a knowledge base storing knowledge on the primary sources that Dante refers to in his works, i.e. the works of other authors Dante refers to in his texts. At present, this information is scattered on many paper books, making it difficult to systematically overview the cultural background of Dante and to obtain a well-founded perception of how this background was gradually set up in time. The same applies also to other authors, therefore the applicability of our work extends well beyond the specific author we are considering in our project. The digital library that we are building is based on an ontology for representing the knowledge on one author's works and on the primary sources embedded in the commentaries to these works. Following this approach, a semantic network of Dante's works and of references to primary sources of these works was created. Furthermore, a web application allowing users to explore the semantic network in various ways and to visualize statistical information about the references as charts and tables was developed.Source: Semantic web (Print) 8 (2017): 385–394. doi:10.3233/SW-150198
DOI: 10.3233/sw-150198
Metrics:
Bartalesi Lenzi V., Meghini C.
This paper describes a digital library developed within the "Towards a Digital Dante Encyclopaedia" project, a three years Italian National Research Project that aims at building services supporting scholars in creating, evolving and consulting a digital encyclopaedia of Dante Alighieri's works. The digital library is based on a knowledge base storing knowledge on the primary sources that Dante refers to in his works, i.e. the works of other authors Dante refers to in his texts. At present, this information is scattered on many paper books, making it difficult to systematically overview the cultural background of Dante and to obtain a well-founded perception of how this background was gradually set up in time. The same applies also to other authors, therefore the applicability of our work extends well beyond the specific author we are considering in our project. The digital library that we are building is based on an ontology for representing the knowledge on one author's works and on the primary sources embedded in the commentaries to these works. Following this approach, a semantic network of Dante's works and of references to primary sources of these works was created. Furthermore, a web application allowing users to explore the semantic network in various ways and to visualize statistical information about the references as charts and tables was developed.Source: Semantic web (Print) 8 (2017): 385–394. doi:10.3233/SW-150198
DOI: 10.3233/sw-150198
Metrics:
See at:
ISTI Repository | content.iospress.com | Semantic Web | CNR ExploRA
2015
Report
Unknown
Knowledge acquisition on Dante Alighieri's works
Locuratolo E. I., Bartalesi Lenzi V.
The approach followed for the identification and the implementation of visualization diagrams able to support the knowledge acquisition on Dante's works is described. Two high level structures and an implementation model are proposed. An example of citation histogram is given; one of its possible refinements is considered. The article is part of the Towards a Digital Dante Encyclopedia, a three-year Italian National Project which aims to build a digital library endowed with services to support scholars in creating, evolving and consulting an encyclopedia on Dante Alighieri and on his works.Source: ISTI Technical reports, 2015
Locuratolo E. I., Bartalesi Lenzi V.
The approach followed for the identification and the implementation of visualization diagrams able to support the knowledge acquisition on Dante's works is described. Two high level structures and an implementation model are proposed. An example of citation histogram is given; one of its possible refinements is considered. The article is part of the Towards a Digital Dante Encyclopedia, a three-year Italian National Project which aims to build a digital library endowed with services to support scholars in creating, evolving and consulting an encyclopedia on Dante Alighieri and on his works.Source: ISTI Technical reports, 2015
See at: CNR ExploRA
2017
Contribution to book
Restricted
Formal components of narratives
Bartalesi Lenzi V., Meghini C.
One of the main problems of the current Digital Libraries (DLs) is the limitation of the informative services offered to the users, who express their queries in natural language. Indeed, DLs provide simple search functionalities that return a list of the information objects contained in them. No semantic relation among the returned objects is usually reported, which could help the user in obtaining a more complete knowledge on the subject of the search. The introduction of the Semantic Web, and in particular of the Linked Data, has the potential of improving the search functionalities of DLs. In this context, our final aim is to introduce the narrative as new first-class search functionality. As output of a query, the new search functionality does not only return a list of objects but it also presents a narrative, composed of events that are linked to the objects of the library and endowed with a set of semantic relations connecting these events into a meaningful semantic network. This paper presents a study of the Artificial Intelligence literature, especially of the Event Calculus theory, in order to identify the formal components of narratives. Furthermore, the mapping between these components and the standard ontology CIDOC CRM is presented, in order to evaluate if it could be taken as reference vocabulary to create an ontology for narratives. On the top of this ontology, we will develop the new search functionality for DLs.Source: Digital Libraries and Multimedia Archives, edited by Agosti Maristella, Bertini Marco, Ferilli Stefano, Marinai Simone, Orio Nicola, pp. 112–121, 2017
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-56300-8_11
Project(s): PARTHENOS
Metrics:
Bartalesi Lenzi V., Meghini C.
One of the main problems of the current Digital Libraries (DLs) is the limitation of the informative services offered to the users, who express their queries in natural language. Indeed, DLs provide simple search functionalities that return a list of the information objects contained in them. No semantic relation among the returned objects is usually reported, which could help the user in obtaining a more complete knowledge on the subject of the search. The introduction of the Semantic Web, and in particular of the Linked Data, has the potential of improving the search functionalities of DLs. In this context, our final aim is to introduce the narrative as new first-class search functionality. As output of a query, the new search functionality does not only return a list of objects but it also presents a narrative, composed of events that are linked to the objects of the library and endowed with a set of semantic relations connecting these events into a meaningful semantic network. This paper presents a study of the Artificial Intelligence literature, especially of the Event Calculus theory, in order to identify the formal components of narratives. Furthermore, the mapping between these components and the standard ontology CIDOC CRM is presented, in order to evaluate if it could be taken as reference vocabulary to create an ontology for narratives. On the top of this ontology, we will develop the new search functionality for DLs.Source: Digital Libraries and Multimedia Archives, edited by Agosti Maristella, Bertini Marco, Ferilli Stefano, Marinai Simone, Orio Nicola, pp. 112–121, 2017
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-56300-8_11
Project(s): PARTHENOS
Metrics:
See at:
doi.org | link.springer.com | CNR ExploRA
2018
Contribution to book
Restricted
Knowledge Acquisition on Dante Alighieri's works
Locuratolo E. I., Bartalesi Lenzi V.
The approach followed for the identification and the implementation of visualization diagrams able to support the knowledge acquisition on Dante's works is described. Educational aspects of mathematics and statistics underlying the histogram representations are proposed, and the approach to acquire knowledge on Dante's works, starting from visualization diagrams is described. The article is part of the Towards a Digital Dante Encyclopedia, a three-year Italian National Project.Source: Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology, edited by Mehdi Khosrow-Pour, pp. 5067–5076. Hershey: IGI Global, 2018
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-2255-3.ch439
Metrics:
Locuratolo E. I., Bartalesi Lenzi V.
The approach followed for the identification and the implementation of visualization diagrams able to support the knowledge acquisition on Dante's works is described. Educational aspects of mathematics and statistics underlying the histogram representations are proposed, and the approach to acquire knowledge on Dante's works, starting from visualization diagrams is described. The article is part of the Towards a Digital Dante Encyclopedia, a three-year Italian National Project.Source: Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology, edited by Mehdi Khosrow-Pour, pp. 5067–5076. Hershey: IGI Global, 2018
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-2255-3.ch439
Metrics:
See at:
doi.org | www.igi-global.com | CNR ExploRA
2021
Conference article
Open Access
The IMAGO project: towards a knowledge base of medieval and renaissance geographical works
Bartalesi Lenzi V., Pratelli N.
The image of the world created by the Medieval and Renaissance culture was crucial to the development of Western thought in European history. To the best of our knowledge Medieval and Renaissance geographical works have not been studied using digital methods. The three years (2020-2023) Italian National research project IMAGO - Index Medii Aevi Geographiae Operum - aims at providing a systematic overview of this literature using Semantic Web technologies. As the first step to develop tools to support scholars in creating, evolving and consulting a knowledge base (KB) of the geographical works, we created an OWL 2 DL ontology. Following the re-use logic and to maximize the interoperability, we developed the ontology as an extension of two reference ontologies, that is the CIDOC CRM vocabulary and its extension FRBRoo, including its in-progress reformulation, LRMoo. In this paper, we present the project, the ontology and the tool to populate it that we developed. Furthermore, we present a preliminary study to map the works collected in the IMAGO KB and the manuscripts stored in the KB of the Mapping Manuscript Migrations project.Source: SWODCH 2021 - International Joint Workshop on Semantic Web and Ontology Design for Cultural Heritage, Bolzano, 20-21/09/2021
Bartalesi Lenzi V., Pratelli N.
The image of the world created by the Medieval and Renaissance culture was crucial to the development of Western thought in European history. To the best of our knowledge Medieval and Renaissance geographical works have not been studied using digital methods. The three years (2020-2023) Italian National research project IMAGO - Index Medii Aevi Geographiae Operum - aims at providing a systematic overview of this literature using Semantic Web technologies. As the first step to develop tools to support scholars in creating, evolving and consulting a knowledge base (KB) of the geographical works, we created an OWL 2 DL ontology. Following the re-use logic and to maximize the interoperability, we developed the ontology as an extension of two reference ontologies, that is the CIDOC CRM vocabulary and its extension FRBRoo, including its in-progress reformulation, LRMoo. In this paper, we present the project, the ontology and the tool to populate it that we developed. Furthermore, we present a preliminary study to map the works collected in the IMAGO KB and the manuscripts stored in the KB of the Mapping Manuscript Migrations project.Source: SWODCH 2021 - International Joint Workshop on Semantic Web and Ontology Design for Cultural Heritage, Bolzano, 20-21/09/2021
See at:
ceur-ws.org | ISTI Repository | CNR ExploRA
2023
Book
Restricted
Semantic Web - Introduction to Semantic Web languages
Meghini C., Bartalesi Lenzi V.
The Web makes a very large amount of information available to users in the form of documents. The Semantic Web is a fundamental extension of the web as it allows, in addition to documents, the sharing of data (including document metadata) in a standard format along with their semantic context expressed in a formal and shared language. Applications in documentary science, biology, cultural heritage and electronic commerce have already demonstrated the validity of this approach. This volume constitutes a gentle introduction to the technologies and languages of the semantic web, clearly illustrating the steps necessary to transform a product published on the web into a set of data that can be processed and reused across applications, users and communities. This is the second monograph of the ebook series "Digital Culture Notebooks" edited by the Laboratory of Digital Culture of the University of Pisa (http://www.labcd.unipi.it) and published by Simonelli editore. The series houses short monographs on tools and research in the field of Digital Humanities which emerged from the work of teachers and students who collaborate with the Laboratory itself. It aims to support a wider dissemination of digital culture, understood as the field in which the humanities and some sectors of informatics interact and collaborate.Source: Milano: Simonelli, 2023
Meghini C., Bartalesi Lenzi V.
The Web makes a very large amount of information available to users in the form of documents. The Semantic Web is a fundamental extension of the web as it allows, in addition to documents, the sharing of data (including document metadata) in a standard format along with their semantic context expressed in a formal and shared language. Applications in documentary science, biology, cultural heritage and electronic commerce have already demonstrated the validity of this approach. This volume constitutes a gentle introduction to the technologies and languages of the semantic web, clearly illustrating the steps necessary to transform a product published on the web into a set of data that can be processed and reused across applications, users and communities. This is the second monograph of the ebook series "Digital Culture Notebooks" edited by the Laboratory of Digital Culture of the University of Pisa (http://www.labcd.unipi.it) and published by Simonelli editore. The series houses short monographs on tools and research in the field of Digital Humanities which emerged from the work of teachers and students who collaborate with the Laboratory itself. It aims to support a wider dissemination of digital culture, understood as the field in which the humanities and some sectors of informatics interact and collaborate.Source: Milano: Simonelli, 2023
See at:
www.mondadoristore.it | CNR ExploRA
2013
Conference article
Restricted
A Preliminary Study on the Semantic Representation of the notes to Dante Alighieri's Convivio
Bartalesi Lenzi V., Locuratolo E. I., Meghini C., Versienti L.
We present a study on the semantic representation of the knowledge embedded in the notes to Convivio, a philosophical essay composed by Dante Alighieri. The notes were produced by an Italian scholar in structured text format. First, we analyzed the content of the document annotated by the scholar and on this basis we created an underlying high-level UML model that plays the role of an initial conceptualization. In the second step, we tried to identify terms belonging to vocabularies used in the Digital Libraries domain, which could be used for specifying the UML conceptualization. To this end, we investigated several existing ontologies, and we chose the terms that we considered useful to represent our knowledge. In order to describe all the knowledge embedded in the notes, we added classes and properties. Finally, we built a RDF graph that represents the semantics of the notes.Source: DH-CASE 2013 - 1st International Workshop on Collaborative Annotations in Shared Environment: metadata, vocabularies and techniques in the Digital Humanities (co-located with DocEng 2013), Florence, 10 September 2013
DOI: 10.1145/2517978.2517983
Metrics:
Bartalesi Lenzi V., Locuratolo E. I., Meghini C., Versienti L.
We present a study on the semantic representation of the knowledge embedded in the notes to Convivio, a philosophical essay composed by Dante Alighieri. The notes were produced by an Italian scholar in structured text format. First, we analyzed the content of the document annotated by the scholar and on this basis we created an underlying high-level UML model that plays the role of an initial conceptualization. In the second step, we tried to identify terms belonging to vocabularies used in the Digital Libraries domain, which could be used for specifying the UML conceptualization. To this end, we investigated several existing ontologies, and we chose the terms that we considered useful to represent our knowledge. In order to describe all the knowledge embedded in the notes, we added classes and properties. Finally, we built a RDF graph that represents the semantics of the notes.Source: DH-CASE 2013 - 1st International Workshop on Collaborative Annotations in Shared Environment: metadata, vocabularies and techniques in the Digital Humanities (co-located with DocEng 2013), Florence, 10 September 2013
DOI: 10.1145/2517978.2517983
Metrics:
See at:
dl.acm.org | doi.org | CNR ExploRA
2014
Conference article
Open Access
Towards a semantic network of Dante's works and their contextual knowledge
Tavoni M., Andriani P., Bartalesi V., Locuratolo E., Meghini C., Versienti L.
We present the "Towards a Digital Dante Encyclopedia" project, a three years Italian National Research Project, that aims at building a prototypical digital library endowed with services supporting scholars in creating, evolving and consulting a digital encyclopedia of Dante Alighieri and of his works.Source: DH2014 - Digital Humanities 2014, Losanna, Switzerland, 7-12 July 2014
Tavoni M., Andriani P., Bartalesi V., Locuratolo E., Meghini C., Versienti L.
We present the "Towards a Digital Dante Encyclopedia" project, a three years Italian National Research Project, that aims at building a prototypical digital library endowed with services supporting scholars in creating, evolving and consulting a digital encyclopedia of Dante Alighieri and of his works.Source: DH2014 - Digital Humanities 2014, Losanna, Switzerland, 7-12 July 2014
See at:
dharchive.org | CNR ExploRA
2015
Software
Unknown
DanteSources
Bartalesi Lenzi V., Meghini C., Andriani P., Metilli D.
DanteSources is a tool that allows you to retrieve information about Dante's primary sources. DanteSources allows you to visualize through tables and charts the list and the distribution of primary sources, authors and thematic areas cited by Dante in his works.
Bartalesi Lenzi V., Meghini C., Andriani P., Metilli D.
DanteSources is a tool that allows you to retrieve information about Dante's primary sources. DanteSources allows you to visualize through tables and charts the list and the distribution of primary sources, authors and thematic areas cited by Dante in his works.
2016
Conference article
Restricted
Usability evaluation of the digital library DanteSources
Bartalesi V., Meghini C., Metilli D., Andriani P.
In this paper we present DanteSources, a Digital Library of Dante Alighieri's primary sources, i.e. the works of other authors that Dante cites in his texts. Currently, this information is scattered in many books, making it difficult for the scholars to retrieve it and also to produce a systematical overview of the cultural background of Dante. In order to overcome this problem, an ontology expressed in RDF/S was developed to represent this knowledge. Once the ontology had been defined, we populated it with the data included in authoritative commentaries to Dante's works. We stored the resulting RDF graph into a Virtuoso triple store. Finally, on top of this graph, we developed DanteSources, which allows users to extract and display the knowledge stored in the knowledge base in the form of charts and tables. In this paper we present the results of a survey to collect suggestions and comments from end-users on their interactions with DanteSources in order to evaluate its usability.Source: HCI International 2016 - Human-Computer Interaction. Novel User Experiences. 18th International Conference, pp. 191–203, Toronto, ON, Canada, 17-22 July 2016
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-39513-5_18
Metrics:
Bartalesi V., Meghini C., Metilli D., Andriani P.
In this paper we present DanteSources, a Digital Library of Dante Alighieri's primary sources, i.e. the works of other authors that Dante cites in his texts. Currently, this information is scattered in many books, making it difficult for the scholars to retrieve it and also to produce a systematical overview of the cultural background of Dante. In order to overcome this problem, an ontology expressed in RDF/S was developed to represent this knowledge. Once the ontology had been defined, we populated it with the data included in authoritative commentaries to Dante's works. We stored the resulting RDF graph into a Virtuoso triple store. Finally, on top of this graph, we developed DanteSources, which allows users to extract and display the knowledge stored in the knowledge base in the form of charts and tables. In this paper we present the results of a survey to collect suggestions and comments from end-users on their interactions with DanteSources in order to evaluate its usability.Source: HCI International 2016 - Human-Computer Interaction. Novel User Experiences. 18th International Conference, pp. 191–203, Toronto, ON, Canada, 17-22 July 2016
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-39513-5_18
Metrics:
See at:
doi.org | link.springer.com | CNR ExploRA
2016
Conference article
Restricted
Steps towards a formal ontology of narratives based on narratology
Bartalesi Lenzi V., Meghini C., Metilli D.
Narrative is emerging as a notion that may enable overcoming the limitations of the discovery functionality (only ranked lists of objects) offered by information systems to their users. We present preliminary results on modelling narratives by means of formal ontology, by introducing a conceptualization of narratives and a mathematical expression of it. Our conceptualization tries to capture fundamental notions of narratives as defined in narratology, such as fabula, narration and plot. A validation of the conceptualization and of its mathematical specification is ongoing, based on the Semantic Web standards and on the CIDOC CRM ISO standard ontology.Source: 7th Workshop on Computational Models of Narrative, pp. 4–10, Kraków, Poland, 11-12 July 2016
DOI: 10.4230/oasics.cmn.2016.4
Project(s): PARTHENOS
Metrics:
Bartalesi Lenzi V., Meghini C., Metilli D.
Narrative is emerging as a notion that may enable overcoming the limitations of the discovery functionality (only ranked lists of objects) offered by information systems to their users. We present preliminary results on modelling narratives by means of formal ontology, by introducing a conceptualization of narratives and a mathematical expression of it. Our conceptualization tries to capture fundamental notions of narratives as defined in narratology, such as fabula, narration and plot. A validation of the conceptualization and of its mathematical specification is ongoing, based on the Semantic Web standards and on the CIDOC CRM ISO standard ontology.Source: 7th Workshop on Computational Models of Narrative, pp. 4–10, Kraków, Poland, 11-12 July 2016
DOI: 10.4230/oasics.cmn.2016.4
Project(s): PARTHENOS
Metrics:
See at:
drops.dagstuhl.de | CNR ExploRA
2016
Conference article
Restricted
Steps towards accessing digital libraries using narratives
Meghini C., Bartalesi V., Metilli D.
One of the main problems of the current Digital Libraries (DLs) is the limitation of the informative services offered to the users. Indeed, DLs provide simple search functionalities which return a list of the information objects contained in them. No semantic relation among the returned objects is usually reported which can help the user in obtaining a more complete knowledge on the subject of the search. The introduction of the Semantic Web has the potential of improving the search functionalities of DLs. Many cultural institutions have represented their metadata into formal descriptions encoded by means of formal languages such as RDF and OWL. In this context, the aim of our research is to introduce the narrative as a new search functionality which does not only return a list of objects but presents a narrative, composed of events that are linked to the objects of the library and endowed with a set of semantic relations connecting these events into a meaningful semantic network. The paper presents the first theoretical achievements on a model for representing narratives.Source: 10th International Workshop on Artificial Intelligence for Cultural Heritage co-located with the 15th International Conference of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence (AI*IA 2016), pp. 10–17, Genova, Italy, 28 November 2016
Project(s): PARTHENOS
Meghini C., Bartalesi V., Metilli D.
One of the main problems of the current Digital Libraries (DLs) is the limitation of the informative services offered to the users. Indeed, DLs provide simple search functionalities which return a list of the information objects contained in them. No semantic relation among the returned objects is usually reported which can help the user in obtaining a more complete knowledge on the subject of the search. The introduction of the Semantic Web has the potential of improving the search functionalities of DLs. Many cultural institutions have represented their metadata into formal descriptions encoded by means of formal languages such as RDF and OWL. In this context, the aim of our research is to introduce the narrative as a new search functionality which does not only return a list of objects but presents a narrative, composed of events that are linked to the objects of the library and endowed with a set of semantic relations connecting these events into a meaningful semantic network. The paper presents the first theoretical achievements on a model for representing narratives.Source: 10th International Workshop on Artificial Intelligence for Cultural Heritage co-located with the 15th International Conference of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence (AI*IA 2016), pp. 10–17, Genova, Italy, 28 November 2016
Project(s): PARTHENOS
See at:
ceur-ws.org | CNR ExploRA
2017
Software
Unknown
Narrative building and visualising tool
Metilli D., Bartalesi Lenzi V., Meghini C.
The Narrative Building and Visualising Tool (NBVT) is a semi-automatic tool to construct and visualise narratives, intended as semantic networks of events related each other through semantic relations. This tool obeys an ontology for narratives. NBVT uses Wikidata/Wikimedia Commons as external knowledge base of images and entities. The user of NBVT can select instances of the narratives ontologies among automatically proposed Wikidata entities, otherwise new entities can be created. NBVT assigns URIs to the selected instances and facilitates the construction of events based on these instances, and their linking to form narratives. The knowledge collected by the tool is exported as Linked Data.Project(s): PARTHENOS
Metilli D., Bartalesi Lenzi V., Meghini C.
The Narrative Building and Visualising Tool (NBVT) is a semi-automatic tool to construct and visualise narratives, intended as semantic networks of events related each other through semantic relations. This tool obeys an ontology for narratives. NBVT uses Wikidata/Wikimedia Commons as external knowledge base of images and entities. The user of NBVT can select instances of the narratives ontologies among automatically proposed Wikidata entities, otherwise new entities can be created. NBVT assigns URIs to the selected instances and facilitates the construction of events based on these instances, and their linking to form narratives. The knowledge collected by the tool is exported as Linked Data.Project(s): PARTHENOS
See at: dlnarratives.eu | CNR ExploRA