On June 29th and 30th, 2022, the Provenance Lab hosted a workshop on the role of subjectivity and uncertainty in provenance Linked Open Data. Researchers and practitioners engaged in modeling art history information through Linked Open Data were invited to participate in the event. Participants showcased real-world examples of the role of subjectivity and uncertainty in provenance records and discussed different approaches and solutions to addressing them.

How we structure the subjectivity and uncertainty of a statement in LOD is still very much an open question and challenge. This is the same for structuring provenance LOD. After all, the reconstruction of an artifact’s history is only ever achieved through the interpretation of historical sources and the formulation of hypotheses by scholars. Such hypotheses are subjective, however, and may contain degrees of uncertainty depending on the scholar’s confidence in them. It is thus crucial to translate subjectivity and uncertainty when structuring provenance in LOD, since false objectivity only prevents debate and multi-perspectivity.