Linked Open Data (LOD) and Knowledge Graphs have become essential technologies for connecting, enriching, and exploring humanities data across institutional and disciplinary boundaries. This beginner-friendly ACDH Tool Gallery provides an introduction to the principles and practices underlying semantic data and knowledge representation in the context of digital humanities research. The workshop begins with an overview of Linked Open Data concepts, including identifiers, ontologies, and the Semantic Web. Participants will then gain hands-on experience with SPARQL, the standard query language for RDF data, learning how to formulate and execute basic queries against knowledge graphs. In the final session, participants will be introduced to SHACL (Shapes Constraint Language), a framework for describing and validating RDF data structures. The Tool Gallery is intended for humanities scholars and researchers with little or no prior experience in semantic technologies. By the end of the workshop, participants will have acquired a foundational understanding of Linked Open Data and practical skills for querying and validating knowledge graphs, enabling them to assess how these approaches can support their own research and data management practices. 

What to expect: 

• 10:00 - 11:30: Introduction to Linked Open Data by Massimiliano 

• 11:30 - 12:30: Lunch break 

• 12:30 - 14:00: SPARQL basics by Katharina 

• 14:15 - 15:45: SHACL by Lukas 

• Laptop 

• Interest in the topic 

Katharina Wünsche, MSc

... studied computer science at the University of Vienna and worked as a full-stack developer on various projects for schools and museums. Her areas of interest include visualization, semantic web, and science communication.

At the ACDH, she part of the research units DH Research & Infrastructure and Linguistics as a research software engineer. She is currently working on the LexVAD20 project, which investigates lexical variation in Austrian dialects in the 20^th century, and on the WIBARAB project, which investigates beduin-type Arabic.

Lukas Plank, MA

... studied Philology in Vienna and is part of the research unit DH Research & Infrastructure. He currently works on the Computational Literary Studies Infrastructure project as well as on the Releven project at University of Vienna as a Python developer, specializing in semantic technologies.

Lukas' academic interests include computational philology, scholarly editing and graph-based knowledge representation and reasoning.

Massimiliano Carloni, PHD

… received his PhD in Classical Philology from the Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa with a thesis on ancient Greek rhetoric, entitled ‘Isocrates' Philippus. Introduction, translation, and commentary’. His research interests include ancient Greek and Latin literature, digital long-term preservation, semantic technologies, and natural language processing.

At the ACDH, Massimiliano is part of the research unit DH Research & Infrastructure. He is currently involved in the EU-funded ATRIUM project, which aims to facilitate digital methods and improve data and service interoperability in archaeology and other disciplines. He is the main responsible for the Vocabs service at ACDH and DARIAH-EU, and is part of the team behind ARCHE (A Resource Centre for the Humanities). He also provides additional support to the OpenAtlas team regarding the interface with ARCHE and digital archiving questions.

Massimiliano is passionate about making digital methods and research results accessible to a wider audience. Among other activities, he participates in the KinderUni initiative organized by the University of Vienna and is an editor for the English version of the Programming Historian.

Previously, he participated in the academic graffiti project INDIGO (project leader: Geert J. Verhoeven), which aimed to document and analyze 13km of contemporary graffiti on the Danube Canal in Vienna, and in the project RepoLandscape (PI: Matej Ďurčo), for the consolidation and harmonization of the Austrian repository landscape.