• (The)Study of the Eastern Classic
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• no.69
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• pp.115-146
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• 2017

This paper is about the research on ontology design for a digital archive of seonsaengan(先生案) of the Joseon Period. Seonsaengan is the register of staff officials at each government office, along with their personal information and records of their transfer from one office to another, in addition to their DOBs, family clan, etc. A total of 176 types of registers are known to be kept at libraries and museums in the country. This paper intends to engage in the ontology design of 47 cases of such registers preserved at the Jangseogak Archives of the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS) with a focus on their content and structure including the names of the relevant government offices and posts assumed by the officials, etc. The work for the ontology design was done with a focus on the officials, the offices they belong to, and records about their transfers kept in the registers. The ontology design categorized relevant resources into classes according to the attributes common to the individuals. Each individual has defined a semantic postposition word that can explicitly express the relationship with other individuals. As for the classes, they were divided into eight categories, i.e. registers, figures, offices, official posts, state examination, records, and concepts. For design of relationships and attributes, terms and phrases such as Dublin Core, Europeana Data Mode, CIDOC-CRM, data model for database of those who passed the exam in the past, which are already designed and used, were referred to. Where terms and phrases designed in existing data models are used, the work used Namespace of the relevant data model. The writer defined the relationships where necessary. The designed ontology shows an exemplary implementation of the Myeongneung seonsaengan(明陵先生案). The work gave consideration to expected effects of information entered when a single registered is expanded to plural registers, along with ways to use it. The ontology design is not one made based on the review of all of the 176 registers. The model needs to be improved each time relevant information is obtained. The aim of such efforts is the systematic arrangement of information contained in the registers. It should be remembered that information arranged in this manner may be rearranged with the aid of databases or archives existing currently or to be built in the future. It is expected that the pieces of information entered through the ontology design will be used as data showing how government offices were operated and what their personnel system was like, along with politics, economy, society, and culture of the Joseon Period, in linkage with databases already established.