Dominic,
Thanks for your outstanding report on the activities around
interoperability.
I agree that CIDOC-CRM is gaining popularity. It is also great to know
that there is an OWL serialization for it [1].
How do you see CIDOC-CRM compared to FRBRoo in terms of bridging the gap
between cultural heritage disciplines?
I also strongly agree with your point about abstraction. One of the
topics that we touched in our session was that CIDOC-CRM, while being
extremely flexible, is also hardly usable by humans on a daily basis.
Since collection managers and librarians cannot catalog records using
these models directly, we need an abstraction layer to map cataloging
ontologies into the broader CIDOC-CRM. I would love to see, e.g. a RDF
serialization of CDWA(I think that there is some effort in that
direction with CONA[2]). I am curious to see what you and the Swedish
National Archives are doing in this regard.
Also, if you want a human-readable publishing platform (website, mobile
app, etc.) you need another layer that maps these broad models to
something more fit for human consumption, e.g. dcterms, VRA core, or
such. CIDOC-CRM can be used for cross-institutional interoperability or
search/query APIs where you want to retain the full complexity of the
model.
Thanks,
Stefano
[1] http://erlangen-crm.org/
[2] http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabularies/cona/about.html
On 11/17/2015 12:56 PM, mcn-l-requ...@mcn.edu wrote:
Message: 2
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2015 17:58:36 +0000
From: Dominic Oldman<do...@oldman.me.uk>
To:"mcn-l@mcn.edu" <mcn-l@mcn.edu>
Subject: [MCN-L] LAM interoperability SIG?
Message-ID:
<CAHVLp01w=qodfhznfqyr5xxjlwkgoszcxqzeyb9aj1rqp-+...@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
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
--
Stefano Cossu
Director of Application Services, Collections
The Art Institute of Chicago
116 S. Michigan Ave.
Chicago, IL 60603
312-499-4026
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