According to Duarte’s article, ontology is the strategy of organizing and categorizing information into data. Today, I will examine what ontology is used in formulating Immigration Workshops Event Calendar from City of L.A.
The dataset shows both a calendar-like format and table of contents. In the table, the information is categorized into date of event, organization, site name, location, start/end time, language, notes, free, and contact, which all contributes to better understanding of the workshop events. There are also different functions such as exporting the data to other platforms, visualization, and comment/discussion.
This dataset will be most useful to current and future immigrants who are seeking to obtain information on policies and procedures of immigration. For instance, most of the workshops are intended to educate about citizenship tests and DACA renewal, which are gaining most demand nowadays due to recent political decisions. It is possible to induce the trend of the events, that many of them are held at public libraries and free of charge, which corresponds with the purpose of the workshops which is to help immigrants who are often marginalized and financially struggling. Also, language is often provided as English and Spanish, which represents the demographics of most immigrants.
Even though I believe this dataset is useful for most immigrants, it seems fair to say that the notes are still ambiguous about what will be discussed during workshop. For instance, when the notes simply states “immigration clinic,” it is not clear which sector of immigration topics will be the main focus of the workshop. Also, the dataset does not include what types of documents are necessary for smooth process or any additional information that participants can refer to before the workshop date to facilitate themselves for better understanding.
If I were to start over with data-collection using different ontology from the point of view of a pre-law college student who is hoping to volunteer for the workshop, I would want the start and end time to be combined as one column, since it is less effective to consider them separately. Also, I would like to know how many seats will be provided and the number of professionals who would be at the site, so that I can get better idea of the scale and functionality of the event. Also, knowing more specific einformation on the topics that will be discussed or range of issues that may be addressed would be much more helpful. I will still keep the calendar format, however, since it is easier to keep track of the events that would work better for people’s schedule.
You analyze this dataset very well by detailing each category and seeing why this information is present. It is interesting how that you notice because there are multiple languages for each event, you can target the demographic that may be present. This information can be useful to the attendees as well as researchers looking at the makeup of the people attending these events.
Thanks for your compliments and feedback on my blog post. Yes, I do agree with you that the demographics are important information with regards to especially an immigration issue. I honestly was surprised that there are no other languages provided than English and Spanish, which shows how important it is to provide minority ethnic groups with good community-supported programs, since there are not much supply as of now.