TOBIAS (the Thesaurus of British and Irish History as SKOS) is an AHRC-funded project. It will publish as a web ontology the Bibliography of British and Irish History's subject classification of 8,800 terms for British and Irish History, in the SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System) format. This will provide a comprehensive, standard resource for all British and Irish history projects wishing to expose their data and link it to other projects using RDF (Resource Description Framework). Further, the classification will be published as HTML, to allow easy access in a human-readable and browsable hierarchical structure.

Just as the early internet was primarily used in academia before being enthusiastically taken up in every area of endeavour, so the semantic web is poised to make the same transition: from academia into commerce, the public sector and personal interest. The project will provide the scaffolding for that to happen in the field of British history. Because the semantic web has been technically demanding for the ordinary user, the project will also publish online tutorials and hold workshops to aid those interested in publishing their own data in this powerful and flexible format.

Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council Follow-on Funding Impact & Engagement Scheme AH/N003446/1

Image: Tobias and Sara on their Wedding Night, copyright Victoria and Albert Museum.