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What can Linked Open Data do for us? How the Beyond Notability project is re-evaluating women’s work in archaeology, history and heritage.

Dr. Sharon Howard

University of Southampton, UK

POSTPONED

A vintage-looking (1920s)  image of women of various ages and occupations, plus text with the full title of the project in vintage font: "Beyond Notability: Re-evaluating Women's Work in Archaeology, History, and Heritage in Britain, 1870-1950".

Image source: Sharon Howard

Beyond Notability is building a new and innovative database documenting several hundred women working in archaeology, history and heritage in Britain c.1870-1950. The database uses a wiki-based interface to store and publish the data as Open Linked Data, which is in turn readily queryable for analysis and visualisation in order to generate new insights into large-scale, longitudinal change in women’s working lives during this period. In this talk I discuss the benefits (and challenges) of the project’s approach, using specific examples and case studies to illustrate some of our early findings and think about future directions.

About the presenter

Sharon Howard is Research Fellow in Digital Humanities (University of Southampton) on the Beyond Notability project. She has also worked as Research Associate on Power of Petitioning in 17th-century England and Old Bailey Online. Her research interests focus on the social history of early modern Britain (c.1500-1800 C.E.), especially crime/legal history, and women’s history. Her PhD on ‘Crime, Communities and Authority in Early Modern Wales’ was completed at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth in 2003.