Page 84 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 42

XIA Cuijuan, LIU Wei, CHEN Tao & ZHANG Lei / A genealogy data services platform implemented with linked data technologies 083

data were up to 2003. Therefore, we need to establish an open platform and further supplement
and optimize the existing bibliographic records such as the personal information of one’s ancestor
or celebrity and the place information of family migration in certain kinds of genealogy. Most
importantly, new bibliographical records including newly-collected ones and the records about to
be collected should be easily added.

1.2 Differentiated user needs

To construct a genealogy services platform, we have to put users’ needs in the first place. Since
the Shanghai Library opened the first genealogy reading room since 1996, we have accumulated
abundant experience in user services. According to users’ different purposes for utilizing genealogy
resources, the user needs can be divided into the following levels:
(1) Seeking family roots and ancestors based on given information. For general users who need
to trace their family roots and ancestors, they usually search for related genealogy documents,
relevant ancestors or celebrities, relatives’ personal information (such as dates of birth and death,
or life events) based on given information like the name of one’s ancestor or celebrity, family
location, or clan temple title. This type of users requires not only the documents themselves but
also the contents such as data, facts and knowledge included. These contents, for example, contain
the detailed information of the ancestor or celebrity or relative in one’s family, the kinship between
the characters in different genealogy documents, and family migration route. Although the user
need at this level is not complicated, it has a relatively high demand for the precision ratio. The
existing keyword matching search leads to noises to a certain extent. The search needs to be based
on the matching between concepts in order to locate exactly the results that the readers are looking
for. The genealogy services platform should not only offer the convenient way for users to access
documents but also provide them directly with the contents they want.
(2) Knowledge discovery oriented to a specific research subject. For researchers in humanities,
genealogy is one of the vital research materials apart from official historical records and
chorographies. The unique value of the genealogy has been widely acknowledged by academics.
However, the precious intellectual legacy is hidden behind the vast and numerous volumes of
genealogy. If only depending on the current system which organizes resources by documents and is
based on simple fields and keywords for search, it is labor intensive and time-consuming to explore
the data, facts, and knowledge which are scattered among the hundreds of thousands of volumes
of genealogy materials. Thus, it is particularly important to develop the user-friendly knowledge
navigation as well as knowledge discovery functions.For example, by clustering display on
the surname, place, clan temple title and dynasty and discovery for the associated relationship
between concepts and entities, such knowledge as the relationships between people and places, and
interpersonal relations, the geographic migration route of a family, the distribution of a surname