Towards a Genealogical Ontology for the Semantic Web

Ivo Zandhuis (ivo@zandhuis.nl)

AHC 2005 paper (pdf, 109 kb)

This paper - presented at the Association for History and Computing Conference, Amsterdam 14-17 september 2005 - introduces an ontology for the genealogical domain.

Ontologies in XML-syntax: srcont.owl.rdf and genont.owl.rdf

These two files are the XML encoded ontologies as defined in the above paper.

Example: 2 datafiles

To illustrate the way the ontologies work two example files are constructed.

Encoded Genealogical sources: sources.owl.rdf

In this file two archival items are described:

• A page from the register of population of the district of Lemsterland, describing the family of Rinske van der Werf and her husband Johannes Wagenmakers.
• A death-certificate of Renske Pieters van der Werf from the same district

Both sources describe a number of people and contain certain information about these persons. This information is captured in the datafile, according to the structures defined in the srcont-ontology.

Encoded Genealogical research results: conclusions.owl.rdf

In this file genealogical information about Rinkse Pieters van der Werf and her relations with husband and parents is stored, which is the result of my own genealogical research. There are links between the description of these persons and the sources where the personal information is obtained.