Knowledge-based relational search in cultural heritage linked data

This article presents a new knowledge-based approach for finding interesting semantic relations between resources in a knowledge graph (KG). The idea is to characterize the notion of ‘interesting connection’ in terms of generic ontological explanation patterns that are applied to an underlying linked data repository to instantiate connections. In this way, (1) semantically uninteresting connections can be ruled out effectively and (2) natural language explanations about the connections can be created for the end-user. The idea has been implemented and tested based on a KG of biographical data extracted from the life stories of 13,144 prominent historical persons in Finland, enriched by data linking to collection databases of museums, libraries, and archives. The demonstrator is in use as part of the BiographySampo portal of interlinked biographies.