Re: [foaf-dev] Vocabulary for Genealogy/Family Tree Information

On May 9, 2011, at 1:15 AM, Bruce Whealton wrote:

> Hello all,
>        I guess the relationship vocabulary could work for Genealogy
> information but does anyone know of any other actively used vocabularies for
> Genealogy information?  I did see some that was discussed a few years ago.
> So, I wonder if in the meantime a common vocabulary has been developed or
> agreed upon.
> Thanks,
> Bruce

So far as I'm aware, no really good standards have come up (most genealogy software still seems content to use GEDCOM 5(!) to interact with the world outside of the program, although maybe a few systems have FINALLY moved to the XML-based GEDCOM6 by now; I'm not sure on that account).  There have been a number of vocabs that have been played with from time to time (at least one, if not two, "reimplementations" of GEDCOM, as well as a number of variations based on FOAF, relationships and bio vocabs), but, as far as I'm aware, none have gained traction, and most (if not all) of the efforts which have tried to use the Semantic Web for genealogy have basically gone into hibernation at best.  I myself have played with trying to represent the more expressive (if now effectively dead) GENTECH mod
 el in RDF, but didn't get very far due to other time commitments.

Doing genealogy right in RDF is surprisingly difficult for a number of reasons including the fact that serious researchers need to be able to express provenance/trust in data, which hasn't been fully explored in RDF (although with named graphs hopefully making it into a standard soon, this may change).  Minting (not to mention unifying!) URIs is also not trivial for the laymen who would be expected to use such a system, although it would practically be a necessity in order to create a truly linked web of genealogy websites.

That said, if anyone else knows of more substantive progress in the area, I'd be very interested to find out.

--Ian