An Interconnected System for Reference Data

Written by Florian Kräutli on 19 October 2021. Posted in Use Cases

(Reading time: 8 - 15 minutes)

This article is co-authored by Florian Kräutli of SARI and Wolfgang Schell and Irina Schmidt of metaphacts.

Publishing FAIR data in the humanities sector

Reference data is a crucial element of data curation in the cultural heritage and humanities sector. Using reference data brings multiple benefits, such as consistent cataloguing, easier lookup and interaction with the data, or compatibility with other data collections that use the same reference data. Overall, the use of reference data can support the publication of FAIR data - data that is findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable.

In museum collection management, for example, various thesauri can be used as reference data to ensure the accurate and consistent cataloguing of items in a controlled manner and according to specific terminologies. Thesauri exist for various areas of expertise. One example is the Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus® (AAT) which describes the different types of items of art, architecture and material culture, such as "cathedral" as a type of religious building. Authority data has also been published to support the unique identification of specific entities such as persons, organizations, or places, for example, "Cologne cathedral" as a specific instance of the type "cathedral". Such authority data sources include The Integrated Authority File (GND) or the Union List of Artist Names® Online (ULAN) and are specifically important for disambiguating over entities with the same name, e.g., Boston, the town in the UK, and Boston, the city in the USA.

Digital humanities projects often combine several research directions and use materials that cover multiple disciplinary areas. This makes the implementation of reference data difficult, as several reference data sources need to be used to cover all aspects and facets of a project. Moreover, technical access to reference data is inconsistent, with systems using different interfaces and APIs, which makes integration challenging.

The game plan for your Knowledge Graph-driven FAIR Data platform in Life Sciences and Pharma

Written by Sebastian Schmidt on 10 December 2020. Posted in FAIR Data

(Reading time: 7 - 14 minutes)

At metaphacts we help customers leverage knowledge graphs to unlock the value of their data assets and drive digital transformation. We started out with this mission in 2014 and, since then, we've served a multitude of customers in pharma and life sciences, engineering and manufacturing, finance and insurance, as well as digital humanities and cultural heritage.

This blog post will give you an overview of what we have developed in customer projects over the years as our game plan to build a Knowledge Graph-driven, FAIR Data platform and drive digital transformation with data. The post will show you how our product metaphactory can support you every step of the way, and will highlight examples from the life sciences and pharma domains.