Hi Andy, thanks for your interest. At the risk of going outside the bounds of this list I'll give you an outline of why I feel such a format might be useful. I should say that the idea arose from a thinktank exploring the possibilities of the semantic web in museums, following a session when Jeremy Keith, our guest of the day, inspired us all with what was for most of us the pretty unfamiliar world of microformats. The concerns that many of us had about the practicality of hard-core SW approaches seemed to be at least partially addressed by the idea of embedding some lightweight semantics in our web pages. Clearly lots of what we might do with microformats can be done with existing ones, as indeed we have now done at my own institution (for events, contact and location information). However our core activities, revolving around the physical objects in our collections, cannot be usefully reflected by existing formats. Museums and galleries have (typically) collections of unique objects. If they are not unique in the sense that they are not duplicates, then it is still important to be able to distinguish between one pot, say, and another identical one in the same or another collection. In this, and in the fact that their history and provenance (and current ownership) is deemed valuable, they are unlike, say, products in an online shop. A number of sophisticated metadata standards exist for museum objects, ranging from reference models like CIDOC-CRM, through data structure standards like SPECTRUM and CDWA[Lite] to data content standards like CCO, but even the lightest of these is not suited to manual authoring or, really, to embedding in web pages. The role I envisage for a museum object microformat would be: - to identify a unique object on the web, tied (ideally) to an institution - to enable the capture of a very basic set of metadata about that object - optionally, to point at a source of fuller, structured metadata, thereby making a bridge between the light, author-friendly and flexible microformatted semantic web and the stricter, machine-facing Semantic Web And the use-case? Catalogue pages like this: http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/English/Collections/OnlineResources/X20 L/objects/record.htm?type=object&id=742656. Actually the basic idea is to scratch an itch I've long had, to be able to gather together things that I find on multiple websites and do my own thing with them. I've been messing around building a little app that lets me pick up microformatted museum objects from any page (via a bookmarklet) and gather them in one place, kind of like Tails crossed with del.icio.us. That's just what I have long wanted, and I figure that other museum-lovers may feel the same way. The way I've been going with this does take me rather outside the normal practice for microformats but to an extent I'm not concerned as I thing the most important thing is for it to do what is useful to the sector; all the same it's important to, firstly, establish if there's much support in that sector (which I'm trying to do!) and secondly to make sure that wherever possible I inherit from established formats. I'm very interested to hear your thoughts as this is the first time I've tried to explain to people outside the museum community why I think this is worth pursuing. All the best, Jeremy
Jeremy Ottevanger Web Developer, Museum Systems Team Museum of London Group 46 Eagle Wharf Road London. N1 7ED Tel: 020 7410 2207 Fax: 020 7600 1058 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.museumoflondon.org.uk Museum of London is changing; our lower galleries will be closed while they undergo a major new development. Visit www.museumoflondon.org.uk to find out more. London's Burning - explore how the Great Fire of London shaped the city we see today www.museumoflondon.org.uk/londonsburning -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andy Mabbett Sent: 15 May 2007 18:52 To: Microformats Discuss Subject: SPAM:Re: [uf-discuss] Work-of-art/Tim Gambell In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED] g uk>, "Ottevanger, Jeremy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes >proposed work-of-art uf What would be the use-case? -- Andy Mabbett * Say "NO!" to compulsory ID Cards: <http://www.no2id.net/> * Free Our Data: <http://www.freeourdata.org.uk> * Are you using Microformats, yet: <http://microformats.org/> ? _______________________________________________ microformats-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss _______________________________________________ microformats-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
