Dear Stefano, This looks like a good initiative and I would like to take you up on your invite to comment.
Interoperability of archives, libraries and museums is a complicated undertaking (involving people as much as data) and something that the cultural heritage sector has been working on for some considerable time. I would suggest that we now have some mature solutions to this complex problem, but with more open data initiatives this subject is rightly back on the agenda. There have been many initiatives past and present however, the results of some aggregations don’t always lend themselves to all areas of reuse. Bringing together completely different data schemas that use different specialist classification systems is potentially complicated and some solutions have tended to compromise the original meaning/context of the data by using fixed or too generalised models. It also requires a framework of ongoing collaboration. We are soon to release open source software generously funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation which achieves data harmonisation between different institutions without loss of meaning and context – and indeed can often provide richer representations compared to the original source dataset. The CIDOC CRM has not been well represented in the past and until now (more institutions are now adopting it) has largely been used within the academic community. However, in comparison to other integration approaches it provides a very high quality solution but is far easier to implement than has been represented in the community. It transforms data into a semantic framework that allows, not just interoperability, but sophisticated search, analysis, reconciliation and provenance tools. Its language is based on that used by cultural heritage and humanities subject experts rather than technologists and therefore seeks more engagement from the curatorial, archivist and librarian community. With other groups (e.g. Ariadne project) we have starting running workshops aimed at non-technical cultural heritage experts – the first was held at Yale University and the second recently at Oxford University with representatives from a wide range of organisations. We have a number of participants mapping data to CIDOC CRM using a simple, mostly non-technical mapping tool – which is unique because it separates out the mapping of data and knowledge (from people) from more technical processes such as URI and Linked Data generation which often complicate the mapping process. More workshops will hopefully take place in 2016. The aim is that organisations can curate and develop their own CIDOC CRM data representations locally. This is crucial for ongoing sustainability and long lasting interoperability. Removing technical barriers makes this possible. In summary the process is; -Data owners are trained to create accurate and contextual representations of their data (putting back information that was lost in technical digitisation processes, making what is implicit and ambiguous - explicit) giving it high reuse and integration qualities – whether for research, engagement or education. Contextual relationships create a semantic framework for integration and reconciliation and make exploration a richer experience in all these different areas. For this, a consortium run from the Swedish National Archives has created a unique type of mapping system called Mapping Memory Manager (3M). This tool is at the core of a number of projects and has continued funding. A future objective is to create a knowledge base of cultural data patterns relevant across all areas of cultural heritage. The system is freely available as a web application and existing mappings are viewable by the community. -We have implemented a system that provides a higher level of abstraction, originally developed by FORTH (Crete), which creates a stable platform for application development against CIDOC CRM. This level of abstraction works a little like a semantic "database VIEW" and regardless of the type of CIDOC CRM data (and regardless of whether it is from a library, archive or museum) the abstraction creates a consistent and coherent interface based on Fundamental Categories – Things, Actors, Places, Events, Time, Concepts. These categories are connected by a matrix of Fundamental Relationships which provide accessible entry and exploration points to the data and allow the development of user interfaces that span libraries, archives, museums, etc. e.g. http://tinyurl.com/o5u6wj5. Broader more general, or conversely more specialised user interfaces can be developed by using different levels of abstraction. -Members of this community are starting to use a consistent open source semantic technology platform to produce open source applications that make use of cultural heritage knowledge graphs. It is being used and proposed for use in a number of projects both EU and National. This semantic environment and the stable semantic abstraction mean that these tools operate together or independently and can be reused, customised, and parameterised. Some of these tools aim to allow community data enrichment. The first public alpha for comment will harmonise across British Museum and Rijksmuseum data with other datasets being added iteratively. However, what is key is that CIDOC CRM is not really dependent on any particular technology and this is also key for long standing interoperability and collaborative relationships between institutions. Hope this is of interest to MCN members and happy to provide more information. Thanks, Dominic
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