Knowledge Organization of Historical Events in Thailand

Ekkachai Sae-Jueng and Kulthida Tuamsuk

Information and Communication Department, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Khon Kaen University, Thailand

Keywords:

Knowledge Organization, Historical Events, Thailand, Semantic Web, Linked Data, Getty Vocabularies.

Abstract:

The purpose of this research is to analyse and organize the knowledge of historical events in Thailand in order

to construct the knowledge structure and its relationship for further use in a linked data system. A qualitative

research based on content analysis and development of knowledge organization approach is used. Related

information resources included research publications from the e-Library of Thailand Research Fund, Getty

Vocabularies, and Geographic Information System of Cultural Heritage Site of Thailand have been studied

and used for the knowledge organization. The research results provide the knowledge structure of historical

events in Thailand that contain ﬁve classes and relationships of the terms in each class and between classes.

This can be further used for development of linked data and semantic web in the future.

1 INTRODUCTION

History learning can support to understand the

changes and to recognize the civilization in which

we live. Historical study is the method of

systematically learning from past events to give an

account of what has happened in the past (Carr,

2018). Historical studies effort to provide information

and understanding of past historical, legal and policy

events and this is certainly one of the reasons

all modern nations encourage its teaching in some

learning model. Because chronological event is

a continuous, systematic description of past events

as relating to the country, people, period, person,

and phenomena that reﬂects the socio-cultural and

economic aspects (Matthews, 1937), the knowledge

of historical events of the nations can always

been the valuable learning resources. In contexts

of information science, knowledge organization

research has been successfully used the content

analysis approach integrating with technological

techniques, such text mining, data analytics, ontology

modelling, etc. to collect and manage the knowledge

domain of valuable topics (Ibekwe-Sanjuan and

Sanjuan, 2011). In this research, therefore knowledge

organization of the knowledge on historical events

of Thailand has been conducted so that the domain

knowledge on the selected events can be scoped and

structured, and then used for further studies in the

ﬁeld to ontology, linked data and semantic web by

following the digital humanities research (Tuamsuk,

2015).

At present, many organizations have been

developing the knowledge based system in historical

contents and providing for open learning. For

example, the development of “Museum Finland”

or “Culture Sampo” by using Finnish Ontology

Library Service, metadata schemas, and semantic

technology tool such as ONKI – is a Finnish

ontology library service, SAHA – is a browser

based semantic annotation tool, POKA – is a

framework for automatic annotation, and VERA -

is a validation and quality assistant for Semantic

Web data. The “Museum Finland” system can

integrate the Finnish cultural heritage data from

related information sources in the nation including

museums, national library, and national archives

and use a single search technique to retrieve and

present the historical information by time dimension,

location, map, and event chronicle (Hyv

onen et al.,

2009).

The history of Thailand has been recorded

traced back about 800 years ago, divided into four

kingdoms: Sukhothai, Ayutthaya, Thonburi, and

Rattanakosin, Kingdoms. The learning resources for

Thai history available in libraries and media are in

the narrative and documentary formats. This research

attempts to develop the tools for organizing and

searching the knowledge on Thai history so that the

data will be standardized and enabling for semantic

search and linked with the well-known data sources

such as Getty Vocabularies (Harpring and Baca,

130

Jueng, E. and Tuamsuk, K.

Knowledge Organization of Historical Events in Thailand.

DOI: 10.5220/0009094801300135

In Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Social, Economy, Education and Humanity (ICoSEEH 2019) - Sustainable Development in Developing Country for Facing Industrial

Revolution 4.0, pages 130-135

ISBN: 978-989-758-464-0

2013) and Schema.org Vocabularies (Schema.org

Community Group, ).

This paper presents the research results of

historical events knowledge structure in Thailand

which was studied by using a content analysis and

knowledge organization technique in order to identify

the scope and related information resources. The

knowledge structure of Thai historical events will

be use for the development of semantic web for

Thai historical events system (THES) in next research

phase.

2 OBJECTIVES

This research was aimed at analyzing and organizing

the knowledge of historical events in Thailand in

order to identify the scope and develop the structure

of the knowledge for further use as a resource for

ontology and semantic web.

3 BACKGROUND AND RELATED

RESEARCH

The history of Thailand comprised ﬁve periods

by kingdom including the Sukhothai kingdom

(1238–1538 A.D.), the Ayutthaya kingdom

(1350–1767 A.D.), the Thon Buri kingdom

(1767–1782 A.D.), the Rattanakosin kingdom

(1782 A.D. – present), and Democratic period (1932

A.D. – present). In each period has important events

that Thai people known. For instance, the Thon Buri

kingdom under the reign of King Taksin the Great

occurred between 1767 A.D. and 1782 A.D. It is 15

years there were 4 major events: 1) the recovery of

Siam independence, 2) the kingdom establishment, 3)

the kingdom enlargement, and 4) Thon Buri kingdom

ending.

Nowadays information and communication

technology or ICT was used for increasing

chronological learning. There are numerous

ICT-based learning platforms, for example, A

WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented lesson format.

It provides tools and medias for self-learning,

multidisciplinary learning, external classroom,

sharing learning experience, and virtual learning

on its platform (Ott and Pozzi, 2011). Literature

reviews found that there were many research projects

based-on ICT for cultural heritage information

management. For instance, the study “Culture

Sampo: A National Publication System of Cultural

Heritage on the Semantic Web 2.0” has developed

the Museum Finland on web platform which

can associated cultural heritage information from

museums, archives, and libraries in Finland. So it can

presented the information in the features of maps,

times, and history in sequential order (Hyv

onen,

2009). The cultural heritage information presentation

or “CHIP project” of Rijks Museum in Netherlands

which is the artwork recommender based on semantic

web technology. It can provide semantic browsing,

searching, semantic recommendations (Wang et al.,

2010).

This research uses the simple knowledge

organization systems (SKOS) for knowledge

classiﬁcation and collection. It is a ﬁeld of study to

support the use of knowledge organization systems

(KOS). There are many tools or categorize technics

for KOS including thesauri, subject heading systems,

Web Ontology language (OWL), classiﬁcation

schemes, taxonomies, Resource Description

Framework (RDF) within the framework of the

Semantic Web (Zeng and Mayr, 2018).

The Semantic Web or “Web of data” is useful to

enhance web content by machine that can process in

semantic way. The way to approach the Semantic

Web is based on semantic annotations. It uses

to describe the meaning of certain parts of web

information. The major purpose of the Semantic

Web is to enable machines(computers) to do more

advantage work and to develop systems that can

provide trusted collaborations over the computer

network (Antoniou and Plexousakis, 2016). There are

many technologies such SKOS, SPARQL, OWL, and

RDF is a subset in Semantic Web technologies. It can

support people to build data stores on the Web, create

new vocabularies, and create rules for handling data.

In Thailand, the Princess Maha Chakri

Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre developed the

key archaeological sites system. This project used

Dublin core metadata schema for data description and

presented the information of archaeological sites on

the common name, bibliography, geological context,

topography, artifacts of the site, waterways, location,

archaeological summary, route to site, tourism

potential, responsible organization, etc. (SAC, 2019)

A number of projects have used the Getty

vocabularies which comprise controlled terminology

for arts, architecture, geographic names, artist

names and bibliographic materials for linked data

development. The Getty vocabularies are assembled

to let their use in the linked data and can be published

into the linked open data or LOD. The Getty

vocabularies collect terminology in several subjects

including Union List of Artist Names (ULAN),

Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN) and Art and

Knowledge Organization of Historical Events in Thailand

131

Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) which are existing as

LOD Getty Research Institute (2019).

AAT, TGN and ULAN are controlled

vocabularies. For examples of each controlled

vocabularies, TGN comprises place name, place

descriptions, ancient cities, kingdoms, archaeological

sites, physical features and etc., AAT contains

terms, descriptions, and other attributes related to

art, architecture, decorative arts, archival materials,

conservation and etc., and ULAN contains person

name, biographies, related people, and other

attributes related to artists, architects, organizations

(Getty Research Institute, 2019).

4 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

A qualitative research based on content analysis and

development of knowledge organization approach

is used for this research which comprises of the

following steps.

4.1 Identiﬁcation of Information

Resources

4.1.1 The e-Library of Thailand Research Fund

The research publications that contained the term

“history” in the subject headings and keywords in its

records were retrieved from the e-Library of Thailand

Research Fund. It was found that there were 428

items. An analysis of data of each research items was

conducted to identify whether there were research

that have already focused on historical knowledge

structure development. It was found that there were

six research documents providing the knowledge

structure on the historical contents relating to the

speciﬁc topics of each study. The titles of these six

documents were:

Doc.1- The study on relationship of the ancient

through present culture for the development

of cultural and civilization database for GMS

and Malay Peninsula Regions Phase 1.

Doc.2- The study on relationship of the ancient

through present culture for the development

of cultural and civilization database for GMS

and Malay Peninsula Regions Phase 2.

Doc.3- Exploration and sustainable heritage

management in Pai-Pang Mapha- Khun

Yuam Districts, Mae Hong Son Province

Doc.4- Living Angkor Road Project Phase I

Doc.5- Living Angkor Road Project Phase II

Doc.6- Research and development project on

community-based museums, phase 2: Digital

archives on community-based museums in

Thailand.

The examples of knowledge structure from Doc.1

and Doc.2 are in Figure 1 and Figure 2.

Figure 1: Example of a knowledge structure from research

literature (Doc.1)

Figure 2: Example of a knowledge structure from research

literature (Doc.2)

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132

4.1.2 The Study of Getty Vocabularies

The AAT, CONA, TGN, and ULAN of the Getty

Vocabulary Program have been created, compiled,

and disseminated in the Getty Research Institute,

with the purpose of improving access to various

information about art, architecture, decorative arts,

archival materials, conservation, visual surrogates,

and bibliographic materials. There are compliant

with international standards and provide authoritative

information for catalogers, librarian, researchers,

software developer, and data providers (Getty

Research Institute, 2019).

This research explored the Getty vocabularies

structures including AAT (the Art and Architecture

Thesaurus), TGN (Thesaurus of Geographic Names),

ULAN (Union List of Artist Names) to identify the

terms and concepts that can be used for historical

events topic.

The relationship between controlled vocabularies

can be shown in human-readable formats and

machine-readable formats. For example, a

human-readable format was used for human can

read related contents about controlled vocabularies

in a webpage format or hierarchy are format in

Figure 3, and a machine-readable format was

used for a computer programming, application

programming interface(API) that its ﬁve most

common formats: JSON, JSONLD, RDF/XML,

N3/Turtle and N-Triples.

Figure 3: Associative relationships of ULAN (Image from

http://vocab.getty.edu/ulan/500344436)

The Getty Vocabularies can serve in many format

include XML/RDF, JSON, N-Turtles, Relational

Tables, Linked Open Data (LoD), and through

application programming interface (APIs). The ﬁgure

4 shows an example application of knowledge about

“Person” in Thai historical events, Phraya Phichai

(thes person:1004) that linked with TGN and AAT.

Figure 4: Example of person’s linked data

4.1.3 Information Resources for Geographical

Names

The Geographic Information System (GIS) of

Cultural Heritage Site from the Fine Art Department

of Thailand was used as the information resources for

geographical names in Thailand. In this database,

the data on cultural heritage site includes location,

address, age, period, and important note as shown in

Figure 5.

4.2 Knowledge Organization

The data, elements, attributes, and knowledge from

all information resources were collected and analyzed

by using SKOS principle. Similarity terms were

grouped and categorized into the subject domains or

classes as shown in Table 1.

The controlled vocabularies by the Getty

vocabulary is matched with these knowledge

structure in the context of historical events. The

terminologies on “place” were derived from TGN,

“object” were derived from CONA, and “person”

were derived from ULAN.

5 RESULTS

The results of these analysis and organization of

knowledge on the historical events in Thailand reveals

that the knowledge can be classiﬁed into 5 classes.

The details of each class are shown in Figure 6.

(1) Period comprises of name of the historical period

and timespan of the period.

Knowledge Organization of Historical Events in Thailand

133

Figure 5: Example of data in the GIS Cultural Heritage Site

Table 1: Analysis of knowledge structure from identiﬁed

information resources.

(2) Event comprises of name of the historical event

and timespan of the event.

(3) Object comprises of name of object or antique

in the historical event and its story (history note)

that can be link to other controlled vocabularies.

(4) Person comprises of name of the person in the

historical event and its story (history note) that

can be linked to other controlled vocabularies.

(5) Place comprises of name of place or historical

Figure 6: Knowledge structure of Historical Events in

Thailand.

site in the historical event, address, province,

place type, historical registered status in

Thailand, geographic coordinator, image,

timespan, age, architecture type, current

condition, religion and beliefs and its story

(history note) that can be linked to other

controlled vocabularies.

The sub-event class is a sub class of event class

can be linked with every classes as the relationship

between classes shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7: Relationship between classes.

6 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE

WORK

The knowledge structure of historical events in

Thailand resulted from this research that was

collected and analyzed from many information

sources. The results were based on existing standard

dataset (The Getty vocabularies), therefore it can be

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connected to other systems via linked data concept.

Knowledge classiﬁcation of historical events covers

all components of the contents that can describe

the historical events of Thailand. For example, the

historical event on the recovery of Siam independence

in the Thon Buri period comprises of the knowledge

on “Person” such as King Taksin the Great and

Nai (Mr.) Thong In. The knowledge on “Place”

include the places such as the Pho Sam Ton Camp

and the Chao Phraya River near Thonburi city.

These “Person” and “Place” can be occurred in other

historical events in the Thonburi period, and may be

other Thai historical periods. These can be linked

by using the relationship model between classes and

sub-classes. When these data are published within

linked data concept that it can be linked to other

controlled vocabularies, for example, Thonburi city is

in the TGN data (Subject ID:7005221) in the Getty

vocabulary; Thonburi is the preferred term for the

concepts in similar terms Thon Buri and Dhonburi.

It is currently located under the facet World, Asia

continent, Thailand nation and Bangkok province.

Future development of this research will be the

development of semantic web of historical events

in Thailand, of which the knowledge structure in

this study will be used for linked data (RDF)

implementation.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research was supported by the Digital

Humanities Research Group, Faculty of Humanities

and Social Sciences, Khon Kaen University,

Thailand.

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