YIVO Encyclopedia Plays Role in Development of Semantic Web

The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe is playing an important role in the development of the “Semantic Web,” an evolution of the Internet now underway that envisions radical improvements in the ease and efficacy of searches.

In 2014, we reported on YIVO's participation in JudaicaLink, a pioneering Judaica Europeana initiative to catalog Jewish reference works in a Linked Open Data format.  As Dov Winer, the project's co-director reported in an article for Judaica Librarianship (Vol. 18  ISSN: 2330-2976):

Envision a world in which all digitized Jewish content in a variety of databases worldwide is aggregated and accessible to users and programs anywhere, at any time. This content would be cross-linked to conceptual structures such as domain-specific vocabularies and encyclopedias; so that texts, images, maps, as well as sound, music, and video recordings would all become enriched providing them with valuable contextual significance. 

Imagine that a researcher studying the historian Heinrich Graetz (1817–1891) would be able to find all of Graetz’s publications and all works about him in different languages with the click of a mouse button. The different ways his name is spelled (or misspelled) would not be an impediment due to the use of the Virtual International Authority File (VIAF). Following the initial query, the researcher would be able to access all manuscripts and other documents related to Graetz in the archive of the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau aggregated by Judaica Europeana. Moreover, these would be seamlessly linked to the documents in the Center for Jewish History in New York. Related gazetteers would provide substantial information concerning every place that is referred to in any standard biography of Graetz.

Named entities in such documents would be linked to the relevant entries of the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe.”

The YIVO Encyclopedia was the first reference work to sign on to the project. Now JudaicaLink and The YIVO Encyclopedia will be part of a new project, FID Judaica, which will be carried out jointly by the Judaica Division of the University Library JC Senckenberg in Frankfurt and Stuttgart Media University. FID Judaica, the recipient of a one-million-Euro grant from the German Science Foundation, will focus on establishing a comprehensive information system supporting scholarship and research in Jewish studies at all German universities.  

Read Lena Stanley-Clamp’s article about Judaica Link at the DM2E (Digitised Manuscripts to Europeana) blog.