Our Project

Timeline of the Dante Alighieri's timeline

One of the main problems of the current Digital Libraries (DLs) is the limitation of the informative services offered to the user who aims at discovering the resources of the DL by queries in natural language. Indeed, all DLs provide simple search functionalities that return a ranked list of their resources. No semantic relation among the returned objects is usually reported that could help the user to obtain a more complete knowledge on the subject of the search. The introduction of the Semantic Web, and in particular of the Linked Data, has the potential of improving the search functionalities of DLs. In this context, the long-term aim of our project is to introduce the narratives as new first-class search functionality. As output of a query, the envisaged new search functionality should not only return a list of objects but it should also present one or more narratives, composed of events that are linked to the objects of the existing libraries (e.g. Europeana) and are endowed with a set of semantic relations connecting these events into a meaningful semantic network. As a necessary step towards this direction, we developed an ontology for representing narratives as an extension of CIDOC CRM ontology, along with a tool for building and visualising narratives based on the ontology.

Publications

  • Meghini C., Bartalesi V., Metilli D. Representing narratives in digital libraries: The narrative ontology. In: Semantic Web, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 241-264, 2021.
  • Metilli D., Bartalesi V., Meghini C. A Wikidata-based tool for building and visualising narratives. In: International Journal on Digital Libraries, vol. Springer, 2019.
  • Meghini C., Bartalesi V., Metilli D., Benedetti F. Introducing narratives in Europeana: a case study. In: International Journal of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, vol. 29 (1) pp. 7 - 16. University of Zielona Góra Press, 2019.
  • Metilli D., Bartalesi V., Meghini C. Populating narratives using Wikidata events: an initial experiment. In: Digital Libraries: Supporting Open Science. 15th Italian Research Conference on Digital Libraries, pp. 159 - 166. Manghi P., Candela L., Silvello G. (eds.). (Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol. 988). Pisa: Springer, 2019.
  • Bartalesi V., Metilli D., Meghini C. Constructing narratives using NBVT: a case study. 8th AIUCD Conference, Udine, Italy, 22-25 February 2019.
  • Meghini C., Bartalesi V., Metilli D., Benedetti F. A software architecture for narratives. In: Digital Libraries and Multimedia Archives. 14th Italian Research Conference on Digital Libraries, pp. 23 - 29. Serra G., Tasso C. (eds.). (Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol. 806). Udine: Springer, 2018.
  • Bartalesi V., Meghini C., Metilli D. A conceptualisation of narratives and its expression in the CRM. In: International Journal of Metadata, Semantics and Ontologies, vol. 12 (1) pp. 35 - 46. Inderscience Publishers, 2017.
  • Meghini C., Bartalesi Lenzi V., Metilli D., Benedetti F. Introducing narratives in Europeana: preliminary steps. In: ADBIS 2017 - New Trends in Databases and Information Systems. 21st European Conference on Advances in Databases and Information Systems, ADBIS 2017 and 1st workshop on Data Driven Approaches for Analyzing and Managing Scholarly Data, AMSD 2017, 2nd International workshop on Semantic Web for Cultural Heritage, SW4CH 2017 (Nicosia, Cyprus, 24-27 September 2017). Proceedings, pp. 333 - 342. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol. 767. Springer, 2017.
  • Metilli D., Bartalesi V., Meghini C. Using formal narratives in digital libraries. In: Digital Libraries and Archives. 13th Italian Research Conference on Digital Libraries, pp. 83 - 94. Grana C., Baraldi L. (eds.). (Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol. 733). Udine: Springer, 2017.
  • Bartalesi V., Meghini C. Formal components of narratives. In: Digital Libraries and Multimedia Archives. 12th Italian Research Conference on Digital Libraries, pp. 112 - 121. Agosti M., Bertini M., Ferilli S., Marinai S., Orio N (eds.). (Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol. 701). Firenze: Springer, 2017.
  • Meghini C., Bartalesi V., Metilli D. Steps towards accessing digital libraries using narratives. In: AI*CH 2016 - 10th International Workshop on Artificial Intelligence for Cultural Heritage co-located with the 15th International Conference of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence (AI*IA 2016) (Genova, Italy, 28 November 2016). Proceedings, pp. 10 - 17. Luciana Bordoni, Francesco Mele, Antonio Sorgente (eds.). (CEUR Workshop Proceedings, vol. 1772). CEUR-WS.org, 2016.
  • Bartalesi V., Meghini C., Metilli D. Steps towards a formal ontology of narratives based on narratology. In: CMN 2016 - 7th Workshop on Computational Models of Narrative (Krakow, Poland, 11-12 July 2016). Proceedings, vol. 53 article n. 4. Ben Miller, Antonio Lieto, Romi Ronfard, Stephen G. Ware, Mark A. Finlayson (eds.). (OASIcs, OpenAccess Series in Informatics). Dagstuhl Publishing, 2016.
  • Bartalesi V. An ontology for narratives. Phd Thesis, PhD in Information Engineering, University of Pisa, 24 January 2017.
  • Metilli D. A Wikidata-based tool for the creation of narratives. Master Degree Thesis, Digital Humanities, University of Pisa, 6 October 2016.