Ontology · Requirements
Competency Questions
Competency questions are the real-world questions the Viewsari ontology and knowledge
graph were built to answer. They were collected from interviews with four kinds of users
— from art historians to software engineers — and turned into a checklist that
both guides the ontology's design and tests how well it covers the material
in Vasari's Lives. Many can be answered directly as a SPARQL query against the graph.
Who the questions came from
Elena Rossi — Art historian / researcher
Nazeera Marfi — Professor of digital art history
Aaron Warner — Computer scientist / knowledge engineer
John Saffron — Art history student
Phase I — Ontology design
29 questions
Artists and Co-occurrences
CQI.1
Who co-occurred with whom in The Lives?
Elena Rossi
SPARQL
cqi_01.rq
CQI.2
Did artist X co-occur with artist Y?
Elena Rossi
SPARQL
cqi_02.rq
CQI.3
Which artists are mentioned together in the same passage?
Elena Rossi
SPARQL
cqi_03.rq
CQI.4
Where in the text did artists X and Y co-occur (paragraph, biography, volume)?
Elena Rossi
SPARQL
cqi_04.rq
CQI.5
How frequently do two given artists co-occur across the entire corpus?
Elena Rossi
SPARQL
cqi_05.rq
CQI.6
Which artists have the highest co-occurrence frequency with artist X?
Elena Rossi
SPARQL
cqi_06.rq
CQI.7
What is the PMI score for the co-occurrence of artists X and Y?
Aaron Warner
SPARQL
cqi_07.rq
CQI.8
What is the network centrality of artist X in the co-occurrence network?
Aaron Warner
SPARQL
cqi_08.rq
Persons and Attributes
CQI.9
What are the birth and death dates of person X?
Elena Rossi
SPARQL
cqi_09.rq
CQI.10
Which persons mentioned in The Lives are identified as artists?
Elena Rossi
SPARQL
cqi_10.rq
CQI.11
Which persons mentioned in The Lives are not artists (e.g., patrons, clergy, scholars)?
Elena Rossi
SPARQL
cqi_11.rq
CQI.12
In which biography (biographies) does person X appear?
John Saffron
SPARQL
cqi_12.rq
CQI.13
Is person X linked to an external authority record (e.g., Wikidata)?
Aaron Warner
SPARQL
cqi_13.rq
Artworks, Locations, Entities
CQI.14
Which artworks are mentioned in the biography of artist X?
Elena Rossi
SPARQL
cqi_14.rq
CQI.15
Which locations are associated with artist X?
Elena Rossi
SPARQL
cqi_15.rq
CQI.16
Which artworks were created in location L?
Elena Rossi
SPARQL
cqi_16.rq
CQI.17
Can students explore artist collaborations on a geographical map?
Nazeera Marfi
SPARQL
cqi_17.rq
CQI.18
Where is location X located on a map?
John Saffron
SPARQL
cqi_18.rq
Bibliographic and Provenance
CQI.19
Which paragraph and page in The Lives is the source of co-occurrence C?
Elena Rossi
SPARQL
cqi_19.rq
CQI.20
Which volume of The Lives contains the biography of artist X?
John Saffron
SPARQL
cqi_20.rq
CQI.21
What edition or translation of The Lives was used for extracting a given co-occurrence?
Elena Rossi
SPARQL
cqi_21.rq
CQI.22
What is the original text snippet associated with co-occurrence C?
Elena Rossi
SPARQL
cqi_22.rq
CQI.23
What licence is provided by the Viewsari dataset and where can the original source text be found?
Aaron Warner
SPARQL
cqi_23.rq
Search and Data Reuse
CQI.24
How can I execute semantic searches over the knowledge graph?
Aaron Warner
descriptive
CQI.25
How can I reuse the Viewsari data in my own project, and in what form can it be shared?
Nazeera Marfi
descriptive
CQI.26
Is there a SPARQL endpoint or an RDF dump available?
Aaron Warner
descriptive
CQI.27
Which external resources (ontologies, authority data) were used in constructing the knowledge graph?
Aaron Warner
SPARQL
cqi_27.rq
CQI.28
Which authority data (e.g., Wikidata, Iconclass) is connected to the resources?
Elena Rossi
SPARQL
cqi_28.rq
CQI.29
How can my students reuse data in the project course, and can the visualizations be modified and customized?
Nazeera Marfi
descriptive
Phase II — Extended coverage
41 questions
Artists, Collaborations, Relationships
CQII.1
What is the difference between a statistical co-occurrence and an explicitly typed relationship between two artists in the knowledge graph?
Aaron Warner
SPARQL
cqii_01.rq
CQII.2
Which association types between artists (statistical co-occurrence vs. explicitly typed relationship) are represented in the knowledge graph, and how many instances does each carry?
Aaron Warner
SPARQL
cqii_02.rq
CQII.3
Which artists have both a statistical co-occurrence and an explicit typed relationship with artist X?
Elena Rossi
SPARQL
cqii_03.rq
CQII.4
What is the Dice coefficient for the co-occurrence of artists X and Y, and how does it compare to the PMI score?
Aaron Warner
SPARQL
cqii_04.rq
CQII.5
How do I explore relationships between Renaissance artists, artworks, historical events, or locations to identify patterns and trends?
Nazeera Marfi
descriptive
Artworks
CQII.6
Which artworks are explicitly named in the biography of artist X, and which are described only implicitly?
Elena Rossi
SPARQL
cqii_06.rq
CQII.7
What is the surface form by which artwork A is referred to in paragraph P, and is it explicit, implicit, or coreferential?
Elena Rossi
SPARQL
cqii_07.rq
CQII.8
Which artworks are classified as out-of-knowledge-base (OOKB) — no match in Wikidata?
Aaron Warner
SPARQL
cqii_08.rq
CQII.9
Which artworks co-occur with a specific artist in a particular volume, and what are the source paragraphs?
Elena Rossi
SPARQL
cqii_09.rq
CQII.10
Can I explore how artworks reflect collaborative effects, such as shared locations or artistic styles?
Nazeera Marfi
descriptive
Locations
CQII.11
Which locations are mentioned in co-occurrences involving artist X?
Elena Rossi
SPARQL
cqii_11.rq
CQII.12
Which artists were active in location L according to The Lives?
Elena Rossi
SPARQL
cqii_12.rq
CQII.13
Is location L linked to an external authority record (e.g., Wikidata, GeoNames)?
Aaron Warner
SPARQL
cqii_13.rq
CQII.14
Can students explore artist collaborations on a geographical map, filtered by location?
Nazeera Marfi
descriptive
Historical Events
CQII.15
Which historical events are associated with artist X in the knowledge graph?
Elena Rossi
SPARQL
cqii_15.rq
CQII.16
Which artworks were commissioned or destroyed as part of a specific historical event E?
Elena Rossi
SPARQL
cqii_16.rq
CQII.17
How can I identify cross-disciplinary connections between Renaissance art and other historical or cultural phenomena?
Nazeera Marfi
descriptive
CQII.18
Can information about historical events be enriched from external sources (Wikidata)?
Aaron Warner
descriptive
Evidence and Bibliographic Information
CQII.19
At which bibliographic level (work, expression, or manifestation) is each entity of a given source recorded, for citation and attribution across editions and translations?
Elena Rossi
SPARQL
cqii_19.rq
CQII.20
Which edition and translation of The Lives is the source of a given extracted entity or co-occurrence?
Elena Rossi
SPARQL
cqii_20.rq
CQII.21
What is the direct web URL to the paragraph in the Project Gutenberg edition?
Elena Rossi
SPARQL
cqii_21.rq
CQII.22
Is the extracted information derived from Du Vere's 1912 English translation, the 1568 Italian edition, or another version?
Elena Rossi
SPARQL
cqii_22.rq
CQII.23
How does the choice of translation affect the entities and co-occurrences in the KG?
Elena Rossi
descriptive
CQII.24
For co-occurrences involving artist X, can the English and Italian web manifestations be compared?
Elena Rossi
SPARQL
cqii_24.rq
Linked Data Enrichment
CQII.25
Which entities in the KG are linked to Wikidata, and what properties are mapped?
Aaron Warner
SPARQL
cqii_25.rq
CQII.26
Which entities are classified as OOKB (no matching Wikidata entry)?
Aaron Warner
SPARQL
cqii_26.rq
CQII.27
Can I perform a federated SPARQL query combining Viewsari data with an external endpoint (e.g., Wikidata)?
Aaron Warner
descriptive
CQII.28
How can I use Viewsari as a research tool for cross-disciplinary research?
Nazeera Marfi
descriptive
User Interaction and Exploration
CQII.29
How can I apply FAIR principles to bring Viewsari into my project and share with students?
Nazeera Marfi
descriptive
CQII.30
How can I use Viewsari as an interactive visualization platform in lectures?
Nazeera Marfi
descriptive
CQII.31
Can I conduct a proof-of-concept project reusing Viewsari?
Nazeera Marfi
descriptive
CQII.32
How can I integrate Viewsari into my teaching curriculum?
Nazeera Marfi
descriptive
CQII.33
How can I explore relationships between artists, artworks, or locations to identify trends and accumulations of collaborations in a city?
John Saffron
descriptive
Extraction Provenance and Epistemic Modeling
CQII.34
Which extraction activity (NER run, LLM prompt run) generated entity E, and what software agent was used?
Aaron Warner
SPARQL
cqii_34.rq
CQII.35
What was the prompt template used in the extraction run that produced entity E?
Aaron Warner
SPARQL
cqii_35.rq
CQII.36
Which entities were extracted by a statistical method (co-occurrence/NER) versus a generative LLM method?
Aaron Warner
SPARQL
cqii_36.rq
CQII.37
What model version and timestamp are associated with extraction run R?
Aaron Warner
SPARQL
cqii_37.rq
CQII.38
Which entity mentions are typed as explicit and which as implicit, and can the two be retrieved separately?
Aaron Warner
SPARQL
cqii_38.rq
CQII.39
For a given extraction result, can the provenance chain be traced entity → annotation → paragraph → page → volume → translation → original work?
Elena Rossi
SPARQL
cqii_39.rq
CQII.40
Does the KG allow one to assess whether a claimed relationship between two artists is supported by explicit textual evidence, an implicit inference, or purely statistical co-occurrence?
Elena Rossi
SPARQL
cqii_40.rq
CQII.41
How does the ontology represent the epistemic weight of a co-occurrence (PMI) compared to an implicit mention (LLM)?
Aaron Warner
descriptive
