Towards Ontological Modelling of Historical Documents

In this presentation we describe a methodology we have adopted for coding the semantic structure of a historical document and the resulting semantic model. To do this, we adapted currently available methodologies for ontology engineering to the context of semantic document coding. Using Protégé-2000 we then used this methodology to develop a formal ontological model and finally to encode a historical document covering the evolution of the constitution of modern Iran. The resulting semantic model was then evaluated using Protégé-2000 by direct reference back to the set of competency questions and motivating scenarios used to develop the model. Our implementation was successful in answering these competency questions as well as in providing support for the selected scenarios. The implementation and the evaluation results are presented along with our proposed future work.