Benjamin O'Steen wrote:
> In a nutshell, we are building a system to capture the research
> information infrastructure: linking people, departments, grants,
> funders, articles, theses, books and data together. 
>
> (Technical information: using RDF and a mix of published and homegrown
> ontologies, and using an objectstore to act as a serialised, archival
> base for the information. Evidence, context and provenance will be a
> strong focus.)
>   
You might want to take a look at the Vivo project developed here at 
Cornell.  It does exactly what you are describing above.  Check out:

http://vivo.cornell.edu/
http://vitro.mannlib.cornell.edu/

You might want to contact Jon  Corson-Rikert, the project manager 
directly at:  [log in to unmask]