Page 94 - 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 093

the genealogy contents such as information about the ancestor or migration condition. Different
opinions on the data such as genealogy title, creator, and the family’s living place name can be
first raised and amended on the platform after the investigation, verification and acceptance by the
experts.
(2) Data modification
Authenticated experts can modify the data after logging in the platform. After being verified,
reviewed and approved by other experts, the modified data can be released, and the system will
record each modification. Data that can be modified include description information of entities
such as surname, the family’s living place name, ancestor or celebrity as well as bibliographic
information of the genealogy documents. The modification interface is automatically generated
according to the definition of ontology. If the value range is another entity (such as author, the
family’s living place name or surname), one needs to choose the existing entity or establish a new
identity. That is to say, if the author needs to be modified, the attribute values of this entity such
as name, courtesy name, pseudonym name, dynasty, and events should be revised instead of the
character string of the author’s name. After modifying and saving the data, the system will record
which attribute is modified, when and by whom it is modified, and the values before and after
the modification. The front interface will present the new outcome after the data is released after
experts’ approval.

3 The publication and consumption of linked open data

3.1 Open access to public data

During the cleaning process of genealogy data, we first extract the vocabulary data from the
existing metadata records, then further standardize and supplement them, and finally form the
standard vocabulary list. For example, the time information used to describe the living times of the
ancestor or celebrity is recorded by Chinese historical chronology. However, the information used
to describe the creation time of the genealogy document is recorded by the A.D. chronology. A
small part of the incomplete genealogies can only be recorded by dynastic chronology roughly. In
order to unify the statements of time and realize the functions of search results ranking and timeline
location, we have to etablish the correspondence between Chinese historical chronology and A.D.
chronology. Therefore, we arranged the data of “Chinese historical chronology” from 841 B.C. to
the Republican period of China. Considering that the correspondence between chronologies can
be applied not only to genealogy, but also to other historical document resources, and serves for
the Shanghai Library as well as other institutions having the similar demands, we released them to
the public on our website http://data.library.sh.cn in the form of linked open data. The Restful API
technology, the most commonly used in linked data consumption technology, is utilized to provide
open data interface for program invocation (Xia & Liu, 2013). Developers will be able to call this