Abstract

Biographical collections are available on the Web for close reading. However, the underlying texts can also be used for data analysis and distant reading, if the documents are available as data. Such data is usable for creating intelligent user interfaces to biographical data, including Digital Humanities tooling for visualizations, data analysis, and knowledge discovery in biographical and prosopographical research. In this paper, we re-use biographical collection data from a historiographical perspective for analyzing the underlying collection. For example: What kind of people have been included in the collection? Does the language used for describing female biographees differ from that for men? As a case study, the Finnish National Biography, available as part of the Linked Open Data service and semantic portal BiographySampo – Finnish Biographies on the Semantic Web is used. The analyses show interesting results related to, e.g., how specific prosopographical groups, such as women or professional groups are represented and portrayed. Various novel statistics and network analyses of the biographees are presented. Our analyses give new insights to the editors of the National Biography as well as to researchers in biography, prosopography, and historiography. The presented approach can be applied also to similar biography collections in other countries.

中文翻译：

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从历史学角度分析传记收藏作为关联数据：案例芬兰国家传记

摘要

传记收藏可在网络上获得，以供仔细阅读。但是，如果文档作为数据可用，则基础文本也可用于数据分析和远程阅读。此类数据可用于为传记数据创建智能用户界面，包括用于可视化、数据分析和传记和 proopographical 研究中的知识发现的数字人文工具。在本文中，我们从历史学的角度重新使用传记收藏数据来分析基础收藏。例如：收藏中包含了哪些人？用于描述女性传记人物的语言是否与男性不同？作为案例研究，芬兰国家传记，作为链接开放数据服务和语义门户的一部分提供BiographySampo –使用语义网上的芬兰传记。分析显示了有趣的结果，例如，特定的前言群体，如女性或专业群体是如何被代表和描绘的。介绍了传记人物的各种新颖的统计数据和网络分析。我们的分析为《国家传记》的编辑以及传记、前言学和史学研究人员提供了新的见解。所提出的方法也可以应用于其他国家的类似传记收藏。