Industrial Occupations Ontology

Short summary

This investigation sought to semantically represent industrial occupations in the form of an ontology that could be applied in the classification of data both within and beyond the Congruence Engine project. Using processed data from the 1921 census, including a sample taxonomy, we produced a proof-of-concept Industrial Occupations Ontology for the textiles industry that relates concepts including role, activity, material, and object type. In manually producing this proof of concept, it became clear that, to create a fully-populated ontology, a different approach would be required. As such, we proposed further work into exploring the possibilities of participatory and automated approaches to contributing new ontology terms and enhancing the existing resource, which might form the basis of a future project.

Research questions

• How can an occupations ontology serve to connect heritage collections related to industrial heritage?

• What data sources are required to develop an ontology of industrial occupations across our three themes?

• To what extend can an ontology become fuzzily defined, socially developed and collectively maintained?

People

Sarah Middle Conceptualization, Data curation, Investigation, Methodology

Alex Butterworth Conceptualization, Methodology

Arran Rees Conceptualization, Methodology

Data sources (used or developed)

• 1921 Census Report: occupation name and activity and objects/place (data scraped from taxonomical occupations data presented online)

• A Dictionary of Occupational Terms Based on the Classification of Occupations used in the Census of Population, 1921 (http://doot.spub.co.uk/)

Investigation methods/ tools/ code/ software (used or developed)

Methods:

• MethOntology (partial) • MIRO (partial)

Code:

• OWL 2 Full • RDF/XML

Software:

• Protégé

Outputs

• Industrial Occupations Ontology (proof-of-concept)

Licence

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License - CC BY 4.0.