Page 123 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 43

XIA Cuijuan / The opening and application of Chinese historical geography data in Digital Humanities projects of libraries 123

Figure 1. Ontology-based spatial-temporal model of historical geography data.

place name through the concept of events. There are two types of events: place name change events
and place change events. Place name change events generally refers to the change within spatial
scope, leading to a new place. For example, when a place corresponding to a place name cause the
expansion or shrink of spatial scope for some reason, and a new place entity will be generated at
this time. Then this new place entity will be associated with the place name through the original
place entity. Place name change events includes new construction, rename, seat migration,
revocation, change of administrative affiliation and so on. Only the events of new construction and
rename may result in the emergence of new place names, while other events will only cause the
change of place names. Through the place or place name pointed to by the two properties of pre-
event and post-event, the related change events can be found. With this model, we can sort out
the place name change events related to the place name instance of Anchang Xian. The results are
shown in Table 1 below:
Because of the complexity of Chinese historical chronology or Chinese historical calendar, time
is also treated as a concept that is abstracted from time entity. Figure 2 is a temporal model. As
a basic unit of time entity, the chronology of reign title includes the beginning year and ending
year, the title of a reigning dynasty, the dynasty, the reign title, the emperor’s name, the emperor’s
posthumous name and other attributes. To the only time entity is determined by dynasty+reign title
or dynasty+title of a reigning dynasty+reign title. For example, Ming Hongwu is a time entity, the
beginning year and ending year were 1368 and 1398 separately, the emperor’s posthumous name
was Taizu and his name was Zhu Yuanzhang; another example, in the Three Kingdoms period when
Wei, Shu and Wu coexisted, you need to add the title of a reigning dynasty to determine the only
time entity. Three Kingdoms Wei Taihe as a time entity, the beginning year and ending year were