RDF For In-Depth Genalogy

Hi All

Just to introduce myself, I am a freelance IT consultant developing 
accessible Web-based systems in rural South Australia.  I am the 
chair/developer of the Community Connect project 
<http://www.community-connect.net> attempting to bring accessible 
community information to rural areas using Open Source/W3 technologies.

Enough of me ;-)

My wife has been doing considerable family history research and has been 
recording her information in a rather haphazard fashion.  After a recent 
Windoze crash, where she lost two years worth of e-mails, some 
containing critical genealogical information, I decided that she would 
be better off using a 'proper' database for her research.  Because she 
has a cousin who is working on a different part of the tree, I decided 
that the best approach would be to develop a system which would enable 
collaborative research - not quite the Human Genome Project, but going 
that way.

RDF strikes me as a good way of recording this type of information.  I 
have worked out, in draft, a lot of what needs to be stored and most of 
it fits nicely into an RDF model.  I have decided to either try to 
wrangle this into an Annotea framework or follow my instinct and 
re-invent the wheel with my own Perl and MySQL (on which Annotea is based).

Does anyone out there have any established ontologies for genealogical 
purposes?  I want to include in depth things like migration information, 
associates (people who are connected but not family), employment 
history, etc.  I could, once again, re-invent the wheel in collaboration 
with those I know in genalogical circles, but if someone has a working 
solution, I'll have that much more time to produce my Web-based 
genealogy solution...

Cheers

M

-- 
Matthew Smith
Kadina Business Consultancy
South Australia
http://www.kbc.net.au

Received on Tuesday, 6 January 2004 15:07:49 UTC