Gabriel Bodard, University of London
Jun Ogawa, University of Tokyo
On the 1st and 4th of December 2025 we held two meetings of the Pelagios Network’s People Working Group (which works towards consensus and standards for common representation of historical people in structured linked open data) as a programmed activity of the Linked Pasts Symposium (LP11), following up on a preliminary WG meeting on October 30th.
These online-only workshops were designed to explore some sample person-data (extracts of between 100–1000 records per project in a variety of formats) that were collected in our Github repository at previous meetings of the People WG. We introduced these sample datasets to participants and explained the possibility of cloning or downloading the repository, for those interested in hands-on tinkering with the data, or simply exploring the metadata on-screen via the Github interface, for more conceptual analysis. The goal of these workshops was to explore alignments and interoperability between datasets.
Starting at the first meeting, in October, two working groups approached the question:
(1) Led by Gabriel Bodard with many contributors, especially helpful among whom were Emily Helm and Camillo Pelizzari, the first group looked at the metadata and made note of links or alignments between them, including shared fields/properties, terms or vocabularies, common persons or other entities. This was continued in December with an extremely fruitful discussion between Gabby, Jun and Burcun Aksahin comparing library records on Aeschylus from IDREF and GND with the parallel information in Wikidata.
This activity, while relatively theoretical and “low tech,” is an essential component of both the ongoing, more hands-on data processing exercises, and the underlying task of identifying which fields and properties are common (if not universal) and therefore essential for an interoperability format or recommendation. A common format for all prosopographical and other historical person datasets is not feasible (or desirable), but a recommended minimal subset of data fields to expose in a common format would enable cross-searching, interrelationship and other rich research use of many diverse datasets.
(2) Led by Jun Ogawa, the second group experimented with more hands-on activities, including processes such as converting sample data into Wikidata-style RDF, performing data reconciliation, storing and querying the data in a triplestore. We basically worked individually, Nurdan Atalan Çayırezmez and Jun Ogawa working on transforming non-RDF data into defined RDF and Akihiro Kameda on converting RDF into wikidata format.
Thanks to this session, we could have useful technical experiences on dealing with different formats of person-data, and gained insights into what tools or skills were useful or even necessary for future advancement. These insights will eventually help when thinking about how our final output (recommendations, tools, registries) should be designed and developed to increase interoperability among historical people datasets.
Considering these different approaches, the range of background and expertise expected was quite wide, including participants with a range of backgrounds and expertise were welcome, from those with interest in cataloguing or prosopography to those familiar with more technical aspects of Linked Data, including OpenRefine, triplestores, SPARQL. Initial reports on these meetings were discussed on the Ancient People mailing list, and minutes posted to the LOD People Wiki.
For the next steps, we plan to hold another hands-on, technical session at Linked Pasts Japan II, which will be held in February 2026 in Tokyo (most probably hybrid), to continue transforming data into common RDF format and uploading it to a triplestore to query. We expect many Japanese DH scholars and practitioners who are interested and familiar with technical aspects of Linked Data will join the session to make a great advancement on this work.
Also, we will continue organizing regular meetings in 2026 of the PN People WG on topics related to what we worked on at the symposium including ontology comparison, project reports, or more technical issues.
If you would like to get involved in this activity or working group in any way (membership of the Pelagios Network is not a requirement!), simply sign up to the Ancient People mailing list to be kept up to date on meetings and other events.
