"Periods, Organized (PeriodO)": A Linked Data period gazetteer and approach to the modeling of scholarly assertions

The digital files with this record include a text of the presentation and a pdf copy of the PowerPoint slides from the presentation. The PeriodO project seeks to solve a problem in the harmonization of heritage data described according to chronological periods rather than computer-readable calendar dates. It does so using a Linked Open Data approach. Such approaches, in which records in databases are associated with common points of reference, rather than described according to unified metadata schemata, have been successful for the linking of heritage records related to places. So far, however, they have not been successful in linking periodized data, because data producers differ not only in their terminology but in the chronological and spatial extents they ascribe to the same period terms. The PeriodO solution is the creation of a gazetteer not of agreed-upon period concepts, but of period definitions offered by authoritative sources, with transparent modeling of both the assertions themselves and their scholarly provenance. These definitions consist of spatial and temporal coordinates in the form that they are provided by a particular source, resolved into a machine-readable chronological and spatial extent, and identified by a permanent URI (an ARK ID). The project has created a core dataset of more than 2700 definitions and a client interface that will allow a user community to continue to add new information.