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Hello! Welcome to *Out of the Trenches*, an experimental resource discovery, Linked Open Data Project of the Pan-Canadian Documentary Heritage Network,
linking Canadian First World War digital resources through metadata.
The underlying premise is to expose the metadata for these resources using RDF/XML and
existing/published ontologies, element sets and vocabularies, to maximize discovery by a broad user
community and to contribute to the semantic web.
The project chose to demonstrate the power of Linked Open Data using visualizations and to tell stories.
For more information on the project, please see the Out of the Trenches Final Report, available on the canadiana.org website.
Inspired by innovative new visualization applications such as Canvas, by Tim Wray and the powerful * Invisible Australians*,
the application allows the user to explore along the lines of dimensions.
These dimensions include War songs , linking digitized war songs from Bibliothèque et archives nationale du Québec
with digitized scores held at Library and Archives Canada.
War Postcards from McGill University, University of Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Newspapers from University of Alberta and Calgary
Photographs from University of Saskatchewan and Library and Archives Canada
Panoramas and Films from Library and Archives Canada
Exploring a single dimension such as the Canadian Expeditionary Force allows the user to view linked resources related to individual soldiers of the First World War.
For example, one can look at resources related to famous Canadians such as Billy Bishop, John Diefenbaker, Lester B. Pearson or Georges Vanier.
A particularly poignant story is about Mike Foxhead, an aboriginal soldier from Alberta.
Mike was born in Gleichen (Glee-chin) Alberta in 1898.
According to a newspaper article (held at University of Calgary) in the Gleichen Call, February 1917,
Captain Norman S. Rankin visited a dance on the Blackfoot Reserve at Gleichen and encouraged men to enlist.
They did enlist in Calgary and returned to Gleichen singing "It's a long way to Tipperary. Mike Foxhead was among them.
Confirming this enlistment is the Attestation record held at LAC, the signup paper which shows that Mike did sign up in March 1917.
His occupation is listed as Cowboy.
Another newspaper article published August 16, 1917 includes a letter Mike Foxhead wrote in July 1917 from his training camp in England.
He talks about his friends that were discharged before heading overseas and he says,
*I could have got out of it when the other boys got their discharge, but I wanted to do my bit like all other Canadians.
I knew that somebody had to go fight for the Empire....How did the stampede come off?
Did any of the Indian boys ride? I think I'll close now. Best regards to all. Hope to be back sometime. So long. Yours truly, Mike Foxhead. *
Found in the Circumstances of Death record held at LAC, Mike was "killed in action" October 23, 1917
just a couple of months after writing from his training in England. He died in the vicinity of Passchendaele.
Linked to the War diary for the 50th Canadian Battalion, Mike's Battalion, one reads that on October 23, 1917
a patrol was fired upon before being driven back by bombing. After 30 minutes patrols returned, "1 man missing".
That man must have been Mike Foxhead.
And here from University of Saskatchewan is a photograph of Mike with his friends, probably taken shortly after he signed up.
We created an RDA authority for Mike Foxhead, indicating his birth and death place, birth and death dates,
his affiliations and occupations. The user can have a close look at the RDF/XML for this authority, or the RDF/XML for any other resource in the application.
We link to place via Geonames -- the URI takes us to Google Maps -- showing Gleichen Alberta. It is not too far from Calgary.
And here is a postcard from Gleichen in the time period -- showing a stampede circa 1915 -- could Mike Foxhead be among them?
And Mike's place of death was Paschendaele -- linked here again through Geonames.
Another dimension we explored was Events. A time line was developed by a LAC archivist who is an expert in the subject of the First World War.
Over 40 events about the First World War, from a Canadian perspective were established.
The events -- expressed as Linked Open Data using the Event Ontology -- provide start and end dates along with location.
In some cases external links are provided.
For example, the Battle of Saint Julien was the first time gas was used against Canadian troops.
This experimental project proves that Linked Open Data is a powerful tool for connecting previously unconnected resources and stories. Thank you!